All the President's Men and Health Care Reform

I am providing a link to an article and video published before the President's address last night.   Bill Moyers said all I have wanted to say about the nuttiness that has invaded the health care debate, so instead of repeating what he said, here is a link to read it.  It won't take long and it might make you feel better.  It did me.

http://www.truthout.org/090609Z?n

Did you hear the president's speech to Congress and the Nation last night?  I thought it was one of his best yet.  He certainly put the whacko's in their place.  I loved it when he said that if they continue to lie, "we will call you out."  

Here are a few things that have not been stressed before.   Some of them I learned from a doctor on C-Span.

• We spend 1 1/2 times as much on health care as other industrialized countries.
• Only 2% of students studying to be doctors are now becoming primary care physicians because the way the current system works the specialists are paid much more.
• Universal care in other countries is based on Primary Care physicians.
• Doctor's are unable to negotiate with the insurance companies.
  
• There are four different amounts doctors are paid for the same procedure.

Our system is very broken and anyone who wants to keep it this way is making money from it in some fashion or a very uninformed idiot.  (Yeah - I can be nasty  too.)

 

The Republicans looked so small and petty as they sat on their hands and glared.  The ones that actually were texting instead of paying attention made it obvious that they were not about to listen.  They have already decided they will do everything in their power to sabotage the President's agenda, even if it means that the country goes down the tubes.  The shameful outburst by Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, was the most disgraceful thing I have ever witnessed in all my years of hearing presidential addresses.  Talk about  having no class.  When uncivil discourse has fallen to this new low I think Americans had better look at the image we are projecting around the world.  Freedom of speech should not cover boorishness.

Not only did Joe Wilson look rude, he showed his lack of knowledge.  The President did not lie.  Coverage of illegal aliens is NOT in any of the five bills floating around Congress.  One thing Joe (not the plumber)  should have considered is that we are now paying for their care when they show up in emergency rooms.  Personally, I think coverage should be provided for them in some form.  If they have an infectious disease, wouldn't it be better to have medical attention available to them so they wouldn't spread it around?  Maybe we could work with Mexico to be reimbursed for their care, but even undocumented workers deserve to have medical attention; especially innocent children.

The president showed leadership. Now it's up to his men, the Democrats, to help him.  He laid it out and they must see that his agenda passes with the stipulations that he outlined.  He was not firm on the Public Option, but did say that if someone had a better plan to bring costs down he would listen.  I think it's pretty obvious that there is no better plan.  The Repubs claim just cutting waste and fraud and doing away with tort reform is enough.  Baloney!  Those savings would do nothing about covering all the people who do not have insurance. 

If there isn't some way to eliminate the profit - I might say obscene profit - in health care the problem will be with us forever.  The trigger is not a solution; it is only a delaying tactic.  The cooperatives are still handled by insurance companies with all of the pitfalls involved.  Nothing except Medicare for all will really solve the current cost.

After analyzing the objections to reform it really boils down to this:  ideology.  The belief that less government is better.  Well there are many things that government does better than private industry.  However, that argument is for another day.  No one will every change the minds of the people who believe that.  But for the rest of us, we demand that, after fifty years of talking about this, we will now get reform.