The Healthcare Post

Healthcare.  The debate that has been raging in our country for well over a decade, when Hillary Clinton lost her push for universal healthcare during her husbands presidency.  Like so many conversations we have, this one hasn’t really changed.

It’s seems to center around several points:

1. Should we, or should we not, ensure that every American receives health care?
2. If yes, then should we, or should we not, ensure that every American has health insurance?
3. If yes, then should it be payed for through taxation or through private corporations?

It really does feel like this...

I have a feeling – at least locally – that we all want every American to get the medical care they need.  Furthermore, we all know that health insurance – the way it’s currently being run – is getting more expensive much faster than we can keep paying for it.  (It’s killing pension funds and certainly seems like the industry to be in.)

So the debate keeps raging.  Who will pay for it?  How will we pay for it?  There’s a lot of money to be made – or lost – and a lot of interests who want to keep it from changing.  This makes reform difficult, even before we start adding fear into the conversation.

I really despise politics of fear.  So it goes with the “death panels“, where fear, uncertainty, and doubt are thrown around in an attempt to muddle the debate and convince uninformed voters that change is bad and the government is trying to kill them.

I believe that you’ll never go wrong assuming that someone will act in his or her own best interests.

With that said, I don’t see it being in anybody’s best interest to kill me.  I do see it, however, as being the best interests of a lot of other parties to keep me near death.  Treatment is expensive and profitable, and the more treatment that can be provided (to me or to others) the more money there is to be made.  An ounce of prevention might be worth a pound of cure, but there’s much more money to be made in treatment than preventative medicine. 

So is it in my best interest to be beholden to private insurance companies to ensure that I get the care I need?  I’m almost certain that it’s not.  And with that revelation, I leave it as an excercise for the reader to determine how to fix this problem.