I have been following the progress of the legislation in Congress with great interest, and as they get closer to finalizing the legislation in the Senate, it becomes more than apparent that the Republicans and other elements in the political and lobbying scene in Washington are getting desperate and are doing their best to create confusion and sew discord about what President Obama and our Congress are trying to do.
Last Friday the Republican Senator from South Carolina Jim DeMint declared in a meeting with special interests opposing this health care reform that this project will be Obama's Waterloo and if they succeed in defeating the reform, it will break him. As the President pointed out later in a press conference, this reform is not about Obama, no it is about politics as usual. We must not allow the special interests who profit from the current situation to confuse us and deter us from achieving this much needed reform.
Our health care system is not working the way it should. We spend more than any other developed nation on health care and our health care outcomes are not the best of any developed nation. The cost of both health care and health insurance are increasing at more than three times the general inflation and we cannot afford to continue at this pace. It is breaking the economies of our families and our businesses. It is creating a situation where solely because of the cost of health care insurance high tech companies and others are outsourcing jobs offshore because they cannot support the cost of providing health care to these employees and still be competetive in this global economy.
We must find a way to control this problem before it spirals completely out of control. Can we in good conscience as a country continue to accept that we have more than 47 million citizens who have no health care insurance at all? Who cannot afford to provide care to their children? Who cannot afford to care for themselves until a health problem converts to a health crisis that must be attended in the emergency room? I think we as a nation are better than that.
We cannot let the Republicans and their special interest allies among the large hospital groups, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies continue to increase our health care costs with no relation to their own costs, but rather to their need for ever larger profits.
One of the most confusing arguments being presented now by the opponents of this reform is that it will lead to "rationing" of health care by bureaucrats. We must recognize this as a smoke screen designed to confuse our citizens and distort the arguments for reform. Our health care system as it is rations health care on the base of wealth. Those who can afford to buy health insurance, those who work in larger companies who can pool risks and self-insure, and those who can afford to pay for their own health care receive what they need and those less fortunate do not receive the health care or medicines they need because they are rationed by the wealthy special interests in this country.
Do not be fooled by these false arguments about rationing. Is it preferable to have decisions about access to health care be made by experts working for the government who are committed to providing health care for all citizens or by wealthy special interests who want to ration access to health care to provide only to those who can afford it in order to maximize their own profits? As it is, health insurance companies cherry-pick the most healthy from our population to offer insurance to and exclude those with the most serious problems, to avoid cutting into their profits.
Let's not be fooled into entering into a fruitless debate about rationing when there is such a pressing need to reform the way our health care system works so that all citizens have adequate access to the health care they need. We need to get behind this project and I urge all of you who might read this blog to contact your Senator and Congressman and urge them in no uncertain terms to pass this crucial legislation this year without fail. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and our fellow citizens.
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