Ryan’s Wrong —We Need ‘Medicare for all' (May 2011) http://bit.ly/qwkT7Z
For anyone that can't carry a thought out more than one or two steps this comment may appear to be totally un-American. However, the concept of the single payer and the use of the Medicare System to administer it should be ballyhooed by everyone. The Medicare System with a few tweaks can ensure health care for everyone while controlling costs, improving outcomes and ensuring a reasonable return on investments. Health care as it is delivered today ensures only the best care to the wealthiest fraction of our population while ignoring the poorest until they are in crisis and the vast middle portion just hoping that calamity doesn't make a call to their home and if it does you are lucky enough that it is covered by the plans offered by employers that shop based on cost not care.
Without a doubt if you found yourself to be numbered amongst the misfortunate that will have to cope with a major health issue; before Health Care Reform (Obama-care) fully kicks in, one that drives your personal finances into bankruptcy you would feel some outrage. What portion of the bill that drives your now uncertain future was due to the record breaking profits large corporations are posting, or cash being passed from lobbyist to any elected official, or the ubiquitous advertising cost of medical devices & drugs, or the highly inflated salaries and bonuses paid to high ranking corporate officers that you would feel it immoral.
There are plenty of other opportunities for business to earn outrageous margins and for celebrity CEOs to personally gain while denying a living wage to those they employ. It should be as distasteful to the healthy, lucky and well-heeled that maximizing profit margins enter into our national conversation regarding health as it is to those that are most negatively affected by that conversation. I’ve spent more than 30 years in health care finance – in California and Florida – in that time I’ve seen the number of bankruptcy notices increase at the same time financial pressures have grown on hospitals and doctors.
It’s a weird situation we have here – a country that has the best and worst health care the world has to offer.
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