The Great Healthcare Boondoggle

This week, everywhere we look the top story has been health care and healthcare reform. In what we like to call the greatest nation on earth the number of people who are uninsured has risen to over 45 million and continues to grow. The number on this don't lie we spend more money on healthcare per capita than anyone in the world. Yet for all this money we spend we rank 37th in the world between Costa Rica and Slovenia as ranked by the World Health Organization. Clearly something has to be done.

What do the top nations on that list have in common? They made healthcare a right and provide it all of thier citizens. France ranks top of the list with Italy not too far benind are a few of the smallest European nations. These nations provide comprehensive healthcare to all of their citizens. What does that do?

1. It allows doctors to treat conditions when they are mild and very easy to treat, well before they become serious or life threatening.
2. They do a better job of preventive care, keeping things such as obesity and diet in check which goes a long way to keeping costs down by seeing lower instances of hypertension, adult onset diabetes and stroke that are linked to obesity.

Now we must demand more from our elected officials. We must expose the those who are dragging thier feet for the amount of money they are recieving from those who profit under the status quo. We must not buy into the falsehoods floating around indended to scare us.

• There are a few people that come to the US to seek care that they might not otherwise have access to, but there are more Americans that travel to Mexico and Canada to fill perscriptions and seek medical care there.

We must demand that reform include a public option to compete with the insurance compaines.

• They are talking about making insurance an individual mandate, and if that happens a public option is necessary to get any sort of real reform, since without that, people will be forced to buy policies from companies who are profit driven and can deny payment thus deny treatment to pad thier bottom line.
• We must have the public option have the ablitity to negotiate with drug companies to keep costs in check.
• Provisions must be made to hold insurance compaines and thier officers responsible for any of their policyholders who dies because of a denial of treatment.

We can demand better from our healthcare system. To those who cry that it won't work, remember every other nation seems to get it to work rather well. Just remember citizens should not be afraid of thier government a government should be afriad of its citizens.