Health Care: Who Do We Believe?

Health care in the industrial world...is it a privilege or a right?

The nation is divided on this issue. Clearly, the 50% who subscribe to "health care is a privilege" idea, the complacently covered, have decent health care insurance. I mean, what's the worst thing that can happen to you if you don't have health care? Oh yeah, you can die. No big deal, we all die anyway, but let's walk along the razor's edge of madness, and assume health care is a right, anyway. I know...insanity!

Okay, so the GOP wants to continue using the private marketplace to expand coverage and reduce costs. Uh...been there, done that. We already know that profit selects for the healthiest people with the stingiest policies. We already know that our current system leaves the people who need health care the most, submerged in a black hole of hopelessness. Yet, despite those facts, and that the results of a purely profit driven health care system, deliver huge profits for private industry, we continue to allow this tea bagging, GOP and corporate generated tide of propaganda re-baptize us into the "all-knowing" omniscient cult of the corporate enslaved market. Why? Because it's advertised as, "free", and we always believe what we're told.

So what if 50 million people lack access to health care insurance in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth...as long as we're not one of them, what do we care? Well, considering the escalating unemployment and the escalating cost of anything and everything health care related, that hungry black hole may be closer than we think.

Now, last Thursday, President Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans gathered together to discuss live on television the overhaul of our health care system, however, Factcheck.org found the Health Care Summit ripe with errors and misleading remarks. Who are we to believe?

Well, rather than listen to the politicians beholden to the 35,000 lobbyists in Washington that dole out money to shape legislation, for example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America who spent $26 million last year and drug companies who spent tens of millions more to buy off both the Democrats and Republicans, maybe we should, instead, take a look around, and look at the increasing number of good people losing health care insurance, look at the facts, the statistics, all of which come much closer to telling the truth than either party.

The Internet has made information as easy to acquire as ever before in history. Most of us don't even have to leave our homes...it's all right there at our fingertips. Nevertheless, it can be very confusing, and creating a workable health care policy for a nation this large is a daunting task. Our job, as regular citizens is to make sure our politicians are working for us and not against us, because that is what it is happening right now.