All been heard before and simply fear mongering. The USA has the lowest health care rating in the industrialized world, it spends more per person, infant mortality is higher and people die younger, it performs more heart surgeries than any other country with NHC - yet patients live no longer, it performs more high tech testing using MRI/CT etc, yet produces less results, it has more people living without adequate, consistent or even equal healthcare, by its very own system it blocks preventative health care that would ensure preliminary care before people become so ill they require lengthier and more costly treatment - those are just the basics.
In a system that is implemented for all people via national healthcare, hospitals and doctors are paid proportionately according to a systematic approved baseline. Research is still funded. Bush has decimated the Medicare and Medicaid system, capped rates, ignored the people and professionals that advised against it and created these problems.
You don't need HMO' s in a national healthcare system. People will use community hospitals - that's what you pay your tax dollars into so you will use them. The idea of 'people not wanting to use a community hospital' is interesting - it speaks to a number of different issues. The number of poor use the hospital but the number of insured don't want to? Why is that? The hospital is only good for poor people? The service is only good for poor people? Would we rather not change the way the hospitals do business for all the people instead of creating greater social issues by fostering a belief that those with insurance and their families are somehow more deserving and better than others?
Moving away from privatization requires restructuring on many levels and it takes time. It doesn't bankrupt facilities - it creates opportunity to realign a heatlhcare system that provides for all people - the rich, the poor, the indigent and the community at large. The reason for the 3 year recalculation would be to iron out the kinks, determine the funding based on need as populations shift and change. It takes everyone working together and not screaming at separate doors. It takes someone listening to professionals in other countries that make the system work there and using those ideas in the best way here.
The national healthcare system can work. It will work. There is never going to be a right time to change - this agenda has been tossed around in every government that held office for 60 years now and each time, the corporations and industries that stood to profit from the health of the American citizen made sure by their $$$$ contributions to gov't, that it was squashed.
Issues of illegal immigration and prisons need to be addressed - and should be addressed and voted on now. They won't be. Healthcare can't be held up because the adminstration can't get their act together on anything but the 'war on terror' and their belief in exercising their right to move funds and pass laws without ramifications and consideration.
Maybe the 27.5 Trillion that has been moved around could be brought back to the table and used to push start healthcare. Maybe there could be more accountability at every govt level for the millions of middle class who, despite working as hard as every other person in the country, now find themselves falling behind in wages and living with no benefits including health insurance. Rather than propagandize the number of jobs created by not mentioning they are primarily in retail and service industries that pay the lowest wages without benefits, we should tell the truth of the economy as it is now. Healthcare can be streamlined and can be run more efficiently. It can be done to give access to those 45 million without any source of care.
Where you see it won't work, where the obstacles are too great, where you see bankruptcies and nightmares - I see opportunity, equality, safety and health. It takes all of us working together for the common good of the people - not segretating ourselves with our paycheck into the haves and havenots of healthcare.
swife.