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None but the most obnoxiously stubborn or terminally dense could deny that the United States is in a epic level health care crisis. Especially considering the long-term prospects of decent employment and continuing levels of home ownership. The very notion is decried as "socialism," but the fact remains that the incredibly profitable insurance industry is a huge parasite sucking the life blood from our economy minute by minute and day by day. Every citizen who is driven into bankruptcy by medical bills, who is forced to default on a mortgage, or loses a job because of medical issues, is just another blip on the economic disaster radar screen. These are people who cannot, as things stand, offer anything to the overall economic engine.
People who might have a great entrepreneurial idea are held back from doing anything about it for fear of losing medical coverage for their family--easily as important as straight income when the chips are down. Even inadequate insurance is better than none at all. So people don't take that one chance that might springboard themselves and others into a real position of contributing something worthwhile to the economy.
Big corporations are also faltering, partly because of the immense burden this current system puts on them. Not only do they have to pay part of the bill for their employees coverage, they have to maintain staff members to deal with the immense bureaucracy that's been constructed by the insurance industry to make getting a straight answer all the more difficult. What's covered, what's not? Well, that's more or less decided on a case-by-case basis, isn't it? Which makes insurance one of the few things in this country that IS decided that way. And we all know the reason why is because it improves the profit margin.
And let's not even get into small businesses, who either cannot afford to offer any insurance, or are forced to offer the barest minimum because of what the premiums do to their ability to compete in the marketplace with larger companies offering the same product or service.
Americans and American businesses are paying billions of dollars a year to support a system that gives them NOTHING in return but red tape and bureaucracy and people are actually arguing that having only ONE insurer will somehow create a monolithic bureaucracy that will screw everything up? Nonsense.
We would ALL be served by taking the responsibility for health care off the employer and giving it over to the government to manage. Would-be entrepreneurs, corporate fat-cats, and small business owners alike. Not to mention the average citizen who just wants to get Johnny that operation without going so far into the hole that there isn't a ladder made tall enough to affect an escape.
No, Single Payer won't fix the economy. But, given everything else that needs to be done, it's a good first step in the right direction.
This Frankenstein's Monster of health care isn't going to ever be able to get up and walk away from the table, no matter how much electricity we pump into it. It will never be anything more than a shambling corpse given a semblance of life and just awaiting the torch-wielding villagers to put an end to its misery.
What kind of person, what kind of nation, puts the health of a parasite above its own well-being? A severely deluded one, that's for sure. The parasite is called the Insurance Industry and the cure is called Single Payer.
It doesn't get any simpler than that.
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