Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.
U.S. NEWS: Healthcare remains the second greatest problem in America, just behind “growth is the answer.” As those of you who have read my book know, healthcare has been a thorn in my side for many years and at the current rates, I can’t afford to have that thorn removed.
This particular thorn is not covered on my healthcare policy, due to the removal procedure that I recommend having the end results of my not needing a healthcare insurance policy.
I have chronicled the fact that a person in the U.S. on minimum wage cannot afford health insurance. That is, if they were willing to commit their entire pre-taxed gross income to that single cause! Say what?
That’s correct; if a minimum wage earner were willing to give up food, shelter and clothing they couldn’t pay for a decent family health plan. Of course, after a couple of weeks without food, they wouldn’t need health insurance.
There is something terribly wrong with a country where a person can work a lifetime and one trip to the hospital can wipe out all that they have gained. A lifetime of earning, saving, investing…gone in a week.
Our ill conceived medical system combined with unchecked capitalism and a growth and consumption based economy have had one hell of a collision. How did that happen? Did it sneak up on us? Of course not, the math was always there and unrestrained greed has no limits other than those provided by nature. But, beware of the consequences; Mother Nature is one mean Mother.
The problem is that in the mean time, our elected government officials have seen fit to put the current healthcare deficits on the cuff for our kids to pay. We now have funded and unfunded national debt in the U.S. reported as more than $100 Trillion, which greater than the wealth of our entire nation.
So what? Congress will take a trip to Barbados and think this thing over on the beach. There must be an easy way out and that ocean air seems to clear up their minds.
If a problem such as healthcare leads to the deficits that I cited above, that problem needs to be resolved; now. We can no longer accept such rhetoric as, “We’ll form a commission and study it”…the study is done, the results are in, and the patient is dead.
No business in America or anywhere else in this galaxy would allow a problem of this magnitude to go unchecked…but our elected officials did. I said elected, because we have elected them over and over and over.
While the thinkers are in Barbados, the employers of the thinkers had better do some thinking of our own. Most American industry leaving the U.S. cites healthcare costs for their employee’s as the #1 reason. And it should be. Legacy healthcare costs at GM add some $1500 to every vehicle produced.
The time for action is now, not after the election, not wait until our next president is elected, that’s the old plan and nothing has been done except to sweep the problem under the rug.
Insurance companies don’t belong in the healthcare business…period. A person’s life or a fear of losing ones lifetime earnings, should not be a profiteers dream. We all benefit from our healthcare and we all need to pay for it.
I said healthcare, not insurance, not enormous CEO and board salaries, not stockholder profits, not gloated big-pharma profits, not elective cosmetic surgery, not huge litigation fees, not billions in malpractice insurance premiums…just plain old fashioned healthcare without the baggage.
The entire system must be revamped and after all of these years, I believe the pain necessary to spur Middle America to action may have been reached. I’ve been patiently waiting.
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