In an interview with Fred Hiatt , President Obama discusses the nuts and bolts of paying for health care reform.

The Washington Post reports that the business community has not reached a consensus regarding health care. Large businesses such as Wal-Mart, have expressed support for a comprehensive health care overhaul, while the US Chamber of Commerce is opposed.

In an opinion piece, economist Paul Krugman argues that expanding health care coverage and eliminating inefficiencies in our current system not only saves money, but it’s also the moral high ground.
Costs and Compassion

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Our health care system is broken. The current for-profit, market driven private health insurance system costs two and a half times as much as the single payer systems used by most modern countries.

In the United States 47 million people have no health insurance. Estimates are that over 50 million Americans are under-insured with high deductible and co-payment plans. A recent report shows that American small businesses pay 18 percent more per covered member than major corporations. Our life expectancy rate is 50th in the world. And between 18,000 and 20,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have regular access to a doctor. Some of our larger insurance companies use up to 47 percent of the premiums received for non-medical fees, overhead expenses, and profits.

A major reason our manufacturing industries fail to compete in the global economy is because of the high cost of health care. If our nation is to rebound from the current recession and really compete in the new order, we must reduce health care costs and eliminate the profit driven bureaucratic nightmare of our current system (both for profit insurance and hospital providers).

The primary method private insurance companies use to increase profits is to insure healthy people and deny claims to those who get sick and need medical care, i.e. for such reasons as pre-existing conditions. For profit hospital providers are concerned with treating the insured sick not preventing disease. The pharmaceutical companies want the taxpayer to pay full retail for drugs without competition from other drug makers. Why did Congress reportedly extend patent rights for sale of drugs for 12 additional years? Why is it that a drug manufacturer can halt the sale of a generic drug that competes with their product by just saying it is not the same or defective? One reason might be the influence of lobbyists for these companies that are reportedly poring a million and a half dollars a day into the hands of Washington law makers.

Unfortunately, Congress is only considering ways to give more tax money to the hospitals, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies and leave the electorate wondering what happened to “change.” Where is the reform we hear so much about? The current bill in Congress is just the same thing only on Government paid steroids.

We need to scrap the current free market profit driven system and transition to a single payer system that works for everyone.

We could offer medical students a free education, if they agree to work for National Health Care System in a needed specialty and/or area for a specified number of years. We would want to pay these professionals (nurses and physicians) attractive salaries. We could buy out hospitals and begin treating patients that are ill and instruct those who are healthy on how to keep themselves that way.

The propaganda being spewed from Washington politicians, talk radio, and the media about what is going on in Congress is not the discussion that needs to be heard concerning our nation’s health care system. We need to make changes to this system that will actually do something about reducing cost and solving our situation not making it worse. Congress needs to fix this broken system for real.

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