Health Care: The Ticking Time Bomb

Re-define the health care process. Socialise the entire system. The government needs to fund healthcare in this country. Dispense with medicare and the healthcare insurance companies. Stop spending so much on war and international aid and divert the money to health care. Look after your own people at home first! It's a sad indictment when the richest nation on Earth does not look after the very people that make it rich! Americans are expected to fight and die for their country, so what reponsibility does their country have towards them?
A fit nation, leads to a greater GNP, essentially a wealthier country. If people are well, they can work. And what about the pensioners? Should they struggle with healthcare bills in their old age? Isn't America embarrassed by the superior treatment of the elderly in many Western European nations?
Why are so many homeless actually mentally ill? Could it be because there weren't adequately funded support systems in place to house them and look after them? Maybe these people aren't important enough - because they're not productive. Have we lost our humanity - are some people no longer worth looking after?
The notion of socialised healthcare is mis-represented by images of perverted communist values for many in the States. Yet socialised healthcare is alive and well in many modern western capitalist societies. Any of these countries are not as affluent as the US, yet often burdened, they continue to support their socialised healthcare systems for the benefit of their citizens.
There are critics of socialised healthcare in the US. As they pick apart the flaws in these systems around the world, they are seeking to preserve the present status-quo of selection and exclusion in this country.
They do not, of course, focus on the benefits of free health care for the citizens of these countries. This may well raise questions like 'well what are we doing for our citizens'? And, 'why aren't we doing more'?
It's about time the government realistically re-evaluated health care in this country and really decided to leave no-one out.

Loosen your grip on the automatic thoughts that someone might take advantage of you and what you'd like for yourself. This claim that you'd have to give something up when a healthcare plan that preserves and sanctifies life and health for all Americans is passed, is ridiculous; and it is designed to make it seem undesirable.

Let's go to work, and get these changes passed, everyone!!!!

How President Obama can smile and see the changes delayed, I don't know. He and many volunteers like me are determined to see them go through as soon as possible

. The government is intervening because it has to. At this point the system is unsustainable and hopefully a government run option will keep the rest honest.

I understand everyone wants to look out for themselves and their families first, but that does not mean deserting everyone else is an acceptable answer.

Free? As in nobody pays for it? Please elaborate, I'm all ears (so to speak).

I will.

Of course it must be compensated, by streamlining the system and so lowering costs, thereby saving billions/trillions of dollars. Taxing those who have been able to immensely increase their earnings through the opportunities in this country, should "pay it forward", as they'll surely never miss the money. Taxation is already based on incomes, so this is no diversion from current methods.

Talk about fat in anything! The earnings of insurance companies feeding off ever increasing premiums, due in part to ever increasing billing of physicians and hospitals, higher costs of materials, etc. No one with clout has been negotiating to lower the prices, as every other civilized country has done, to maintain their universal health care systems.

It's high time someone called a halt to it, in the USA! We've been the laughing stock of the civilized world, who think us fools for not ensuring that our country's workers, children, unlucky unemployed, and aging population lack appropriate health care; and for allowing physicians to run roughshod over patients, using them as milk cows (or whatever that phrase is).

No wonder the populace here doesn't trust their doctors, after being stripped to the bone financially by them, and then being criticized for non compliance, when medications ordered have become unreachable due to their high prices!!!! Many doctors have been caught by patients recognizing that surgical procedures were done in the doctors' own interests, disregarding theirs. I've worn an elastic knee band for 6 years, that stopped my knee pain as well as the knee replacement surgery for which I'd been booked, might have. I found out that it had been scheduled close to the orthopedic surgeon's retirement, and cancelled that. We've all seen unnecessary procedures done, and the cost of them....... that includes the suffering they incur.

Let's start looking more clearly, less fearfully, and embrace good changes being made, without the distrust our government doesn't deserve. At the AARP Town Hall gathering with President Obama today, a comment was read from an enraged woman who despaired "socialized" medicine and all those "evils" like government running things (as it should). She closed by saying, ".........and don't mess with my (government run) Medicare!!!" Well, Medicare will be included with everyone's health care, including prescriptions, so that money can be saved according to the guidelines being proposed. By the way, our President said that when Medicare was introduced there were the very same objections to it, just as vehemently said, as there are today.

I'm on Medicare, and happy that fraudulent practises will be stopped and that others who have previously been denied health care insurance due to being of "childbearing age", having pre-existing conditions, and aging (as we all should), will have it, without unrealistic caps on expenses they incur. I was once offered health insurance by an employer for whom I worked part time for 32 hours/week, in 2004 at a price of $325./month. I asked what the cap was, and the director of that HH agency became very annoyed. "I don't know", she said, "but you can call the head office to find out". I did that and found out that the cap was $1,350. yearly.

welfare–noun - the good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc., of a person, group, or organization; well-being

I would respectfully submit that our constitution does address this "right"