Health Care for All, Not Insurance Profit Care for the Insurance Companies

Congress will soon consider President Obama's proposal for health care reform. The President's ultimate objective is to provide affordable health care for every American citizen. We are accustomed to private insurance or employer provided health care coverage. However, these approaches have left nearly 16% of our 300 million citizens without affordable health care, and the number of uninsured is increasing daily as companies drop coverage altogether or copays become excessive and unaffordable.

Medical care as practiced in the United States, historically, has been provided, until approximately the mid 1960's, by the family physician who also made home calls. These physicians made their living providing essential health care to virtually everyone, while earning a sufficient income. This perfectly adequate system was hijacked by HMO's and insurance companies (beginning in the 1960's) that decided they were gong to corner the "health care market" along with multi national pharmaceutical corporations. Health care in the USA transformed from the private family doctor practices and frequent home calls to monolithic corporate profit centers paying their executives multi million dollar compensation packages annually, and devising ways to squeeze every dollar out of the pockets of their unwitting subscribers. As the Brecht song goes ; "money, money, money makes the world go round", and this song is certainly ingrained within the medical insurance system that operates in our country today. If you don't have the bucks you don't get health care (except for exceptional emergency care at hospitals that may accept you).

A new day is on the horizon and we have an opportunity to rescue our money driven health care system from the corporate insurance profit machines. This rescue requires that each of us tell our congressional representatives that we demand real change, not a makeover for insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. Universal health, care and a single payer system, separated from profit making health care corporations must be implemented to get affordable health care for all. This require a system such as the existing Medicare or the Veteran's Health care systems that cost much less to administer than all corporate insurance company's spend, and are operated solely to provide health delivery, not money, money, money delivery into the pockets of insurance and pharmaceutical company executives and their top brass.

Our country will recoup the Hippocratic Oath (read link) that seems to have been forgotten, if ever remembered by the medical insurance corporations. We are literally alone in the civilized world when it comes to our money, money, money health insurance scheme. Congressman Conyers has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to accomplish the required transformation to single payer national health care for all. This change must come and will if enough of us tell our President, Senators, and House of Representatives members that you demand a single payer health care system that takes the corporate profit-driven insurance companies out of the health care formula. Please tell them by phone soon. Call the White House after the inauguration next week and let President Obama hear from you also. To deliver a phone message to the President call: 202-456-1111 or White House Switchboard: 202-456-1414. Your and your loved ones' health may depend upon the actions taken by Congress, our next President, and you!