Anger over health care should be directed at broken system

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/story/74783.html

Commentary: Anger over health care should be directed at broken system

By Mike Hendricks | The Kansas City Star



What is it, something like two-thirds of us are supposedly happy with our health coverage?

A few years ago, you could have counted Mary Casey in that number. But then she contracted a rare form of cancer.

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Her thoughts about today's rancorous debate:

"People have no idea, unless they have a chronic illness, what happens if they have to go above and beyond going for a physical or needing anything more than a prescription for their high blood pressure."

No, I think we all know what can happen. It's just that some of us would rather fool ourselves into thinking it could never happen to us. Like the shouters at the town hall meetings.

You wonder if they'd like the current system so much if they or someone in their family came down with a deadly or debilitating disease, only to have their insurer dump them.

Three Republican senators came to town this week to rail against government health care at an invitation-only forum. Meaning it was a friendly crowd. Nobody asked Kit Bond, Mitch McConnell or John McCain if they've done without regular medical screenings since becoming members of Congress.

Yet millions of Americans do go without. Faced with shelling out hundreds of dollars in co-pays for a routine colonoscopy, people choose to buy groceries instead.

The shouters rail about "socialized medicine," even the ones on Medicare, ironically enough.

They pop off about rationing, when rationing already exists, as Mary Casey and others know.

But what Americans ought to be hollering about is the fact that, in a country with supposedly the best health care in the world, some of our friends and neighbors are holding bake sales and raffles so sick relatives can get the treatment they need.

If in this health care debate you feel anger rising within you, direct it at that disgrace — and at those who would leave a broken system unchanged.

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1. the broken system is the problem

and this is what is making the whole healthcare 'reform' thing so very hollow. All they're talking about is offering new types of "insurance" (sic) to be provided by the same folks currently mucking up the system now.

If health insurance becomes involuntary -- a distinct possibility -- the only ones to profit will be Big Medical.

It's the system, not the availability of insurance that is at issue, hence I agree with the OP.

On a side note, this healthcare discussion has held the national focus for several months now, all the while Bush era policies continue to be preserved.

For my own part, the Constitution and civil liberties trump insurance issues. So I see this issue as a very large distraction being played for all it's worth by the powers that be, so they aren't being expected to deal with the restoring the Constitution and the Rule of Law.