An Unhealthy Outlook

Dan Gillmor on the unraveling U.S. healthcare industry:

....What we're witnessing in health care is a national tragedy. Everyone has a scapegoat -- grotesque administrative costs, lawsuits, bad doctors, stupid regulations, insulation of patients from actual costs, you name it. And every scapegoat surely does play a role in a system that costs vastly more every year but delivers increasingly questionable results, with more and more people finding themselves under-insured or not insured at all. So no one is at fault. And everyone is at fault. California will see a bruising fight this fall over a ballot proposition aimed at overturning last year's "California Health Insurance Act" (SB2), which will require employers with more than 50 employees to offer health coverage to workers. Business groups have correctly said this will be a deterrent to job formation in the state, but that's only part of the story. Even a big state like California can only work at the margins of a system that demands national attention. This is an American issue, not a California or Indiana or Maine issue. It's a national issue for many reasons, not least of which is the matter of offshoring. Companies send work outside the United States in part because health care is a taxpayer-funded service in other nations, giving foreign companies another built-in advantage over U.S. firms. But it's a national issue because we simply can't continue the way we're going for much longer. Employers are growing desperate for change. So are the again-growing ranks of the uninsured, and the hospitals that are forced to care for them without sufficient repayment, and the doctors who are losing money on some Medicare patients, and on and on. Some believe the choice is stark, between a system with a large number of insured people who get quality care and another large segment that get nothing, and a single-payer national system that has all the benefits and flaws of typically government-run programs. I think we can do better with an amalgam, a system that forces consumers to bear more costs of routine treatment while offering a safety net for catastrophic problems. I also think the health insurance industry as it exists today is one of the biggest barriers to making this work....

U.S. healthcare needs some major surgery. You can thank the Republicans, while your at it, for trashing Clinton's excellent healthcare proposals of the 1990's. I have yet to see one single act by the Bush Administration that has benefitted Americans in any way, shape or form. Make that Americans earning under $100,000 a year.

Bush and his cronies are nothing more than the neighborhood bullies who steal our lunch money, harrass and intimidate us, do anything they think might make our lives miserable, and seem to enjoy every minute of it. What amazes me is that we're all grown up and yet still act like fraidy cats.