Somehow with all the give and take we’ve lost sight of the
fundamental healthcare issue before the nation. A very large number of us either have totally inadequate
coverage or none at all.
The second group is growing by the day, as unemployment threatens not
only foreclosures on their homes but on their insurance as well. Those who can’t meet their mortgage
payments are likely unable to pay their premiums.
So we dance around the obvious and stand ready, or at least some of those who can make it happen stand ready, to postpone the inevitable yet another time. We’ve stopped talking about the disgrace of people left hung out to die in the wealthiest nation on earth and rather are talking about what it might cost to at long last do the right thing. We don’t seem to lack the will when it comes to building armaments and sending our citizens out to kill and be killed, but somehow have become financial pacifists when it comes to keeping them healthy. We know that other nations take care of all their people, spend less and have equal, or in many cases better, outcomes.
To talk about healthcare reform without at least a public option (a Medicare for juniors as well as seniors) is like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burns, but with blinders on. Without a public component, there is no reform, no a solution. It is a heartless joke.
On September 14, NPR reported on the results of new survey conducted by Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and just published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They found that 63% of the physicians polled favored a public option and another 10% favored a public-only program, in other words universal Medicare (my words not theirs). That means that 73%, a decisive majority, were in favor of at least the option. Thinking back to the historic opposition of the AMA and doctors in general to any public program in earlier days, this is an astounding turn around for the people closest to the problem. I have little doubt that if the same doctors were asked if they believe a Medicare expansion and universal coverage is in our future, even a larger number would agree. It is inevitable.
So what are we waiting for? The facts speak for themselves, the solution is so obvious and now our doctors want to write the prescription. Perhaps there has been no political incentive to join together, but I really wonder how that will play out if Massachusetts, as now seems more than likely, will allow its Governor to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. 60 aye, 40 no? For the sake of our democracy, for its moral compass, say it won’t be so.
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