Health Care thoughts...

We all know that the United States is the only industrialized democracy that does not guarantee health care to all of it's citizens.    If you or someone in your family becomes gravely ill, even if you have health insurance, you can expect to be devastated financially.   There is something fundamentally abusive going on when someone fighting for their life has to think about finances.  It's something that all these other countries think is so abhorrent they have outlawed the possibility.  

In all these debates about cost, taxes and private vs public, that bottom line, gets lost.  The bottom line is it is unacceptable to inflict this level of fear on each other, fear of how to pay to stay healthy.  Yet this is what we do when we make up excuses over and over again for why we can't get health care done.  The people who think they have good insurance are afraid of losing what they have and those who might pay more in taxes resist.  Of course there is the power of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. 

This is where Capitalism breaks down.  Capitalism is great for computers and clothes and vacations but it's not that great at ensuring everyone has an education or can see the doctor.  Imagine if we had no public schools.  And this might make people crazy, but imagine how much better our public schools would be if the rich weren't allowed to abandon them for private schools and had a stake in making them better.  I'm not advocating that per se, but it does make one think.

That's why I wish we were debating a single payer system, a system where everyone has a stake in making that one system work for everyone.  The public option being debated in congress will have to do but it's the least we should do.  If you become sick, all you should be concerned with is how you are going to get well, not if you will lose your home trying to pay to get well.  All these other nations take this for granted.   Until we achieve what they have, we will not be a civilized society.