Healthcare Debate

OK, I know I promised to have this up several days ago, but it has been a very hectic week and it has rained every day for two weeks and I just failed to…never mind. I’ll just get busy on it now.

It looks like this healthcare overhaul is about to come down to the wire. This will be a real tragedy for the American people. The alleged Baucus Bill (alleged because it has passed committee, but has not been written yet) is the only one of the five or so bills under consideration that doesn’t include the deadly “Public Option.” However, the bill does NOT prohibit the public option from being imposed at a later date. Of course, that name, public option, is misleading. What it really means is a government option. The federal government is going to start selling insurance. If that ever happens there is no way to prevent the government from eventually taking over healthcare, lock, stock and barrel. Oh sure, they SAY that won’t happen, but if you believe that I’ve got some land in Florida I’d like to sell you.

This debate started out talking about our healthcare system being broke. If you manipulate the statistics in just the right way, America comes in 37th in the world. Trying to understand how the World Health Organization came up with the formula to determine which country ended up in which place almost caused my brain to explode. The fact is, the US has the lowest mortality rate in 13 of the 16 most deadly cancers in the world. Here is a name you may not have ever heard of, Belinda Stronach. Stronach was a liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and a member of the Cabinet. Remember that Canada’s health care system is supposed to be superior to ours. Why then, did Belinda Stronach forego treatment in the wonderful Canadian Healthcare system and have her cancer treatment in California? Maybe she had some family there or something, I don’t know. The fact of the matter is, every year thousands of people come to this country from all over the world seeking medical treatment.

I have long thought that the way to determine a country’s greatness is to compare the number of people who want IN the country to the number of folks that want OUT of it. The number of people that want into this country for medical treatment is much higher than the number of people wanting to go outside the US for treatment. Having said all of that, it seems that the debate has shifted away from the quality of healthcare and has become centered mainly on health insurance. I suppose this should be appropriate since nowhere in the healthcare overhaul bill is anything said about improving the standards for healthcare. It’s all about the availability of healthcare.

I will tackle the issue of healthcare availability in my next posting. I feel that I have some expertise in that area since I worked for over three years in the medical field. Check back tomorrow.

Have a great day.

John A. Wilson

President

Conservative Action Project