Health reform from my side of the surgery table
Forty years as a surgeon in university and community hospitals gives some authenticity for the following reflections regarding the failings of our health care delivery. Partisan rhetoric has led to shouting matches rather than reasoned choices, while the most fundamental issue in health care reform has yet to be stated: should health care be continued as a profit-driven enterprise? If a problem well-stated is a problem half solved, a clear answer will allow for progress. Here are the some of the problems I have observed:
Here’s a radial idea. Health Care (in America) should be financed by tax dollars. While WAR should be a profit-driven enterprise (it already is, but paid for by federal taxes and deficit spending). We can tax ourselves into ruin, to fix all the world’s problems with US troops and military hardware. Nation building, peace policing, and conflict resolving. But none of this is every voted for, by the people who end up paying for it. We’re treated as just too stupid to know what’s the right course to take.
Meanwhile, when it comes to things Americans could all benefit from. Like better education, and health care. These get little or no tax dollars, compared to WAR spending. And politician who had no problem voting in favor of WAR spending, continue to bicker across party lines, about what form of health care reform they’re in favor of. They always know how to vote for the wrong things (War, NAFTA, etc). But give them a common good issue, and their tiny little heads explode. Face it, the US is run (or ruined) by those who cave in to war profiting conglomerates. And to exploitative health care insurers. Who don’t want what they’ve carefully lobbied for to ever be changed.