What I Think Health Care Reform Must Look Like

I've been following the news about the Obama health care reform matter and have read endless discussions on the Internet. I'm beginning to feel it's all becoming a tempest in a teapot because the main points have been lost--and can NEVER be found so long as the underlying purpose of health care providers is profit. It's very simple really, but just try and bring up the subject on a Facebook link and watch the hysteria.

The problem with Obama's plan is not the fact that he wants to include a public option (I'm hoping he doesn't cave on that too), but that it DOES include private health insurance. It's crazy. Who in their right mind buys groceries, but hires and insurance company to make the payments at the grocery store and to dictate what can be bought (no donuts, no raisin bread . . .)?

It's the pharmaceutical companies (remember they LOVE this new health plan and have made a little $80 billion concession so they can roll merrily on collecting their profits), and the insurance companies (who were some of Obama's biggest contributors) also love the plan ONLY is there is no public option. Bob Herbert wrote extensively in the New York Times this week about Obama's deal with the drug manufacturers which promises that the government will only buy non-generic drugs at full price. No negotiations on the full retail price of drugs which already have generics available. Does this sound like change?

If health care reform is going to succeed in the long run, this is what it will need to be--and I hope will be soon:

1) It is a single payer system--all health care is pain for by the government just as it is in Norway, Finland, even Canada.

2) Doctors are employees--well paid to be sure, but are on fixed salaries with their insurance costs covered by the government.

3) The pharmaceutical companies are nationalized--and profit is removed from the equasion of why a drug is on or off the market (they removed the lyme disease vaccination because it wasn't profitable enough).

4) Everyone in the country (including illegal immigrants) is covered by the national insurance because they are ALIVE.

5) If wealthy people which to pay for cosmetic surgery or other premium, totally elective procedures, they are perfectly welcome to supplement the income of a doctor or medical facility. Here there could be private insurance companies--and they would be free to gouge the rich for elective cosmetic procedures as much as the traffic will allow.

6) All medical facilities are not-for-profit and the people who run the facilities are public service employees. No "non-profit" corporations who have CEOs who are paid in the high six figures. Again, they are well paid, but their job is service, not to make profit.

7) All unfair trade agreements like NAFTA are repealed, and the US begins to treat its neighbors like Mexico as countries that actually have human beings. That will eliminate the need for people to risk their lives to sneak into this country.

I'm afraid that Obama's current plan will have a terrible time because he isn't courageous. He is a dedicated capitalist and thinks that if you smile enough, capitalism can work. It can't. It's doomed. Or put another way, it can't work unless huge segments of the populace are impoverished and denied basic human rights (like health care).