HEALTH CARE RANT

From a public non profit organization, Public Citizen Health Research Group, comes this insightful information via Dr. Sidney Wolfe. He spoke before a Subcommittee on Health at a hearing on Health Insurance.
"The real question is, why should we tolerate the fragmented, highly profitable, administratively wasteful private health insurance industry any longer?" questions Wolfe. To paraphrase his comments, he states the public is way ahead of either Pres. Obama or the congress in its distrust of the health insurance industry. The Congress, on the other hand is writing them into the legislation. They want us to believe health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry will be good citizens and voluntarily lower prices.
In the last 30 years there are three times more doctors and nurses, and 30 times more health administrators. Administrators do not provide any care. The drug companies and insurance companies make more money with a frangmented, uncontroled system that allows them to not insure "unprofitable" people and let the the public (that's you and me) take care of them. 30 other countries have adoped centralized health insurance coverage which reaches as high as 96% of their people by throwing out the health insurance industry that obstructs care. Countries who do this get high coverage at cheaper cost then we now know. So, what model should we follow? A failed, fragmented policy or a practical single payer program that does the right thing by the people of Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, most of Europe, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Turkey?
Public Citizen's Dr. Woohandler's testimony before the same Subcommittee on Health Insurance, pointed out that 62 % of bankruptcies in this country are related to health care. And 50% of those bankrupt families HAD health insurance. Dr. Woolhandler went on to say that private insurance is a defective product. It would take vast government expenditures to support America's uninsured under the current system. It would save $400 billion annually by using single-payer reform just to shrink the health care bureaucracy.
It angers me that good health care is so fundamental to a successful society, and here we are with too many congressional "leaders" taking money from the health industry lobby that is doing it's best to befuddle the picture. My neighbors and friends are mad as hell and believe me, the voters are going to have the last say. Hopefully, it won't be too late for a single-payer reform that has teeth.