Since I haven't written anything in a long time, I just felt the need to get something out here. Let me begin with the Health Care debate that has been raging for over a month now.
For starters, there isn't really a Health Care debate. What there is, sadly, is a Health Insurance debate because the Democrats are too cowardly, the Republicans too crafty, and the American people too stupid to really fix this problem. What we need, first and foremost, is a single payer system for the entire country. Every legal resident of the country should be covered for any necessary medical procedures. Doctors should be reimbursed by a Government controlled agency funded by tax dollars.
No other system proposed would be able to fully cover the entire country as efficiently or as effectively as a single payer system. Today, dozens of insurance companies spend tons of money on redundant paperwork and advertising that would be unnecessary under a government run system. There would also be far less paperwork for the doctors and nurses who waste countless healthcare hours filling out forms to get approval to run tests.
The notion that people don't want the government to come between them and their doctors is ludicrous, not only because we are happy to let the government come between us and a fire, or between us and a criminal, but also because it seems to imply that there is no one between you and your doctor today. Wake up America, that's the insurance company. I would be surprised to find someone who did not have a first hand account, or a close family member with one, about how an insurance company prevented them from getting the treatments they needed without overly complicated paperwork and telephone calls.
As Dr. Dean said, there is virutally no one out there saying we should get rid of Medicare, so why is there so much opposition to expanding Medicare to all Americans? That is what a single payer system would be. It would be a form of Medicare or VA healthcare for all Americans in every hospital.
It is just such a sad thing to see so many people fooled and misinformed about the Health Care reforms facing the country. Sadder still that Senator Kennedy, who fought so long and so valiantly for a single payer health care system, did not manage to live to see it become a reality.
