I have been told by many people I’ve talked to, mostly those opposed to health care reform, that providing universal health care in this country will cost too much. Yet on the other hand, they go on to state we already have universal health care in the US, because anyone can go to a hospital emergency room and get care.
So if it is true we already have universal health care, why is there so much discussion about how much the proposals, before congress, will cost? Who’s paying for it now? And why will it cost more if we enact some legislation?
Then there is the statement “the US has the finest health care in the world”. Oh yeah? But when I ask anyone what criteria they’ve based that statement on, they are at a loss for words. With the exception of cost, they can’t produce any statistics, e.g. quality and number of trained doctors and other health care professionals, the number of hospital beds per capita, lower infection and death rates in hospitals, or even life expectancy (which in most cases indicate quite the contrary), showing how the US leads the world. They can’t even point to statistics on waiting times compared to other countries. They just accept it on faith without any statistics to back that statement up.
Then there is the constant rhetoric about a government take over of health care, and how they don’t want a government bureaucrat coming between doctor patient decisions. Yet they have no problem with a for-profit health insurance bureaucrat, whose compensation and even job security depends on them coming between doctor patient decisions, and denying doctor recommended courses of action when it suits them.
So why is it those in favor of health care reform aren’t as zealous pointing out the truth about the US health care system, as those opposed to health care reform are in spreading lies, and distorting the truth about the US health care system?
Health Care [and other] Conspiracies 
People are afraid of change.
I can understand that, but when that fear is so overwhelming, it blinds you to what is in your own best interest, it’s just down right moronic if not bordering on insanity.
Check out Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas? It explores that very issue of why people are against things that are in their own best interest.
Congress is crafting a politically horse-traded health care plan that has winners and losers based on which lobbyists have the attention of the people putting the plan together, all of them wrangling for benefits for one group at the expense of another group. This is happening because there is no way to raise enough money to be fair and give everyone quality health care under any of the proposals before Congress due to the uncontrolled cost of premiums and health care. And that is because both Democrats and Republicans refused to put single payer on the table. Once you read the details, you realize that the “public option” is a toothless option. Congress will never let a public option “drive out” the insurance companies when Congress receives massive campaign financing from these companies and Congress has an exclusive Blue Chip health care plan which requires these companies to stay around. The primary discussion on television, newspapers. magazines and the Internet has been spent on heated arguments about public option versus no public option. It ignores the elephant in the room — the fact that a single payer system doesn’t have to be government run. The influential talk show hosts and journalists, both liberal and conservative, have failed to inform the public about the way single payer solves most of the cost and other problems that the plans currently before Congress can’t and won’t solve. Liberals are the most responsible for this result since they claimed to be the champions of single payer. They blew the chance for single payer by their arrogant insistence on a government run system come hell or high water. My blog as well as the blogs of others explain how to have single payer without being government run. http://jscope1234gmailcom-jscope.blogspot.com/