patrick.net

Every other industrialized country has universal health care. It works for them:

• All other industrialized countries have higher life expectancies than we do in America. There are 41 countries with higher life expectancies than America.
• No other countries bankrupt their citizens with health care costs. Only America bankrupts you with health care costs -- even if you have insurance. Medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US -- and most of those had health insurance. So under our current system, you are fucked, sooner or later. Unless you're Bill Gates you're just one serious illness away from bankruptcy. Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick.
  Summary: You have no financial security unless we get health care reform.
• No country tells its citizens to commit suicide rather than get health care. If you believe any health care reform would do that, perhaps euthanasia is right for you after all!
• US private insurance companies are death panels - they ration health care and if they decide against you, you die. Every day, they deny care and rescind coverage to maximize profit. Got a serious pre-existing condition and applying for insurance? What do you think the private death panel is going to say to you?
• US private insurance companies are already bloated bureaucracies worse than government. You have no choice in health insurance, except to pay whatever they say, or die. They are only a few insurers, they all offer about the same coverage for a given price, and they don't answer the phone. There is no market.

Something needs to be done about health care in the US. It is badly broken: it wastes money, it bankrupts families, and fails to provide the the quality of health care that all other developed countries get for far lower cost.

The Republican plan is... what? It's to do nothing except deliberately stoke fear of "socialism" and "death panels" while raking in insurance company lobbyist money. There are there are six insurance company lobbyists for every member of Congress.

Insurance industry lobbying money is killing the public-plan health insurance option. And you know that they are funding Fox News, Glen Beck, O'Reilly and others like them. "Fair and balanced" my ass. Turn that crap off and read the actual proposals.

Democrats are guilty of taking their money too, but at least they are talking about real solutions.

The Republicans won't even propose one.

#politics