The financial crisis in which we find this country is the worst since the Great Depression, this much has been widely posited by both sides of the aisle in Congress – oh, and Joe Lieberman. I agree that we need to do whatever we can in order to get us out of the mess. But I’m curious about Obama’s focus on health care at a time like this. Why not abandon that hope, for the present, and work on What Seems To Be The Right Thing To Work On? (namely, the economy, stupid – to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s catchphrase from his era)
In speaking some time ago with a very wise individual, my father Larry Bossinger, he told me what he thought was the reason we need health care reform: most other industrial nations have government-provided, or single-payer, health care systems. Health care is not a cost borne by industry – directly, anyhow… it is borne by everyone through taxes. Thus, companies like Toyota in Japan, Volkswagen in Germany, Fiat in Italy, and Renault in France, don’t have the huge bills for healthcare that companies here in the States do – like GM, Ford, and Chrysler, or, dare I say, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
I’m not convinced a single-payer system is what we need to move toward… but I am convinced that we do need to find a solution so that every American, regardless of income or ability to pay, is guaranteed the best possible primary and emergency health care available. I would even go so far as to suggest that access to health care in an economy so prosperous as ours is a fundamental human right.
If we can borrow trillions to invade a sovereign country where it wasn’t required, we sure can figure out this problem in a way that is equitable to all, and levels our playing field.
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