I'm Right Again Dot
Com A new commentary every Wednesday - July 19, 2017
HEALTH CARE
I've had occasion many times in past decades to remember all of the horror stories in the press about the long waiting lists for patients in nations with national healthcare programs, the claim of a lack of competent physicians in Canada and abroad and the warnings promulgated by some physicians in the United States that they would no longer wish to be healers if such an un-American thing came to pass in the land of the free. I can't help wondering how Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to push Social Security into reality in his first 100 days in office.
Things were quite different in 1934. I had a cousin who put himself through Loyola Medical School by working nights as a pharmacist in a Chicago drug store. Today, the average cost of tuition to attend one of 67 med schools I researched recently is now $32-thousand, 495 dollars a year. Multiply that by eight... or ten.
Many other things have since become solidly entrenched in the system here in America. The healthcare insurance giants are not going to give up their huge profits willingly. They will give billions in campaign contributions to preserve the status quo in Washington and Big Pharma will keep buying those TV ads that take up more than half of all commercial breaks. This is called following the money; the American way to success.
I hate to say this, but what we have is a complete breakdown in the communication system espoused by both political parties. I have never seen Senator McConnell of Kentucky more goggle-eyed. The suggestion by President Trump to let the whole idea wither on the vine and the talk bandied about that maybe we can just table the idea for a year or two is not going to satisfy the hordes of scufflers in the crowd. Me? I don't care. I got mine, Jack...Medicare.
Nevertheless, Healthcare now costs American citizens two to thee times that paid by the citizens of most all other industrialized nations, according to Live Science.com.
Until we solve some of the foregoing problems regarding costs, the Democrats will favor a centralized healthcare system that is bound to go broke, and the Republicans will keep trying to cobble together a privatized, corporate-run system the very wealthy can afford—and millions completely without healthcare.
The most incredible feature is the clandestine manner in which they are going about their mechanizations behind closed doors. They don't trust the people who sent them to Washington. They had better get their acts together before 2020 or a bunch of them will be back being ward heelers, lawyers and lobbyists once again.
In the next weeks, I'll tell you about successful healthcare systems, such as the one that works wonderfully in New Zealand.
-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Mencken
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