Part 2 in a series on Health Care Reform
Universal Health Care or Hillarycare is NOT the Canadian system. Universal Health Care that Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama are promising are nothing like what they enjoy in Canada, France or the rest of the world. We need to understand that what our presidential candidates are offering is more of the same broken system.
Both rely on a corrupt insurance system that maintains profits by denying services. Ads like DividedWeFail are paid for by insurance companies. Legislation in America is no longer wrote by caring civil servants beholden to the public but by lobbyist beholden to corporations. Until we remove lobbyist from the legislative/election process we will continue to have unsafe imports, broken borders, huge trade deficits, astronomical national debt, dependence on foreign oil & a broken health care system.
The U.S. spends twice as much per person on health care as Japan, & three times as much as Great Britain. Yet both those nations have lower infant mortality rates & roughly the same longevity rates.
In fact, virtually all other industrialized nations spend less on health care then we do, but they guarantee universal access to care, & they get better results.
The high cost of health care in the U.S. makes it more difficult for us to compete in the global economy. The Chrysler corporation for example, estimates that despite its bold measures to reduce employee health care cost, its health benefits cost the company $700 per car, compared to an average of $200 per car for its foreign competitors.
Other countries have succeeded in keeping cost down while providing universal health care by exerting government control over both capital expenditures (for hospitals & equipment), & operating cost (fees for doctors, hospitals & prescription drugs). No other country gives doctors, hospitals or pharmaceutical companies as much freedom to increase their fees & their services as we do. Other countries also have lower administrative cost because health care is paid for, in most cases, by just one payer- the government – rather than a myriad of private insurance companies.
Most other nations stress low cost preventive medicine. Take fewer drugs, need fewer surgeries. Almost 25% of all U.S. health care spending goes to managers, administrators, insurers, marketers, & lawyers. Rather than to people who actually provide health care. Administrative cost for private health insurance plans account for an average of 13% of their cost, compared to 3% for government ran insurance. An estimated 600,000 Medicare patients are unnecessarily hospitalized each year – at a cost of $2 billion.
Out of control cost, nursing shortage, no access to preventive care, no doctor training for inexpensive herbal remedies, unnecessary procedures, over crowding, under staffed hospitals & ERs, HMOs that deny services, no doctors or clinics in rural areas, high prescription cost, inept FDA, these problems & many others are NOT addressed by either Hillary’s or Barack’s health care reforms. Both have taken millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical & insurance companies, & so has John Mc Cain.
Solving today’s problems is not as easy as showing up at the ballot box on November. Voting for either party is a vote for more of the same. Everyone can agree on one thing, our government is broke. When your car breaks down you get out & fix it, when government breaks down or stops working it is the duty of the citizens to fix it!
For more click: www.votestrike.com
