Healthcare: A Life and Death Issue

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 46 million Americans, or 18 percent of the population under the age of 65, were without health insurance in 2007 (some sources say that this number is actually 8 million and not 46 million as portrayed on some sources)...

The Urban Institute estimates that under a worse case scenario, 66 million Americans will be uninsured by 2019...

Nearly 90 million people - about one-third of the population below the age of 65 spent a portion of either 2007 or 2008 without health coverage...

The average annual increase in inflation has been 2.5 percent while health insurance premiums for small firms have escalated an average of 12 percent annually...

On average, the uninsured are 9 to 10 times more likely to forgo medical care because of cost and twice as likely to have medical debt...

The United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation in the world and yet, in many respects, its citizens are not the healthiest...

Here's my two cents on healthcare. It is a life or death issue and it seems that we've reduced it to money and politics. People's lives are literally at stake. Some cannot get the help they need because they simply cannot afford it! That is a shame. To say we're supposedly one of the wealthiest countries in the free-world and we can't take care of the people that comprise this so-called great nation? Last I checked, two plus two does not equal three.

The issues at hand seem to be how to help the masses get some kind of healthcare. Has anyone told this to the people who work in healthcare? There are some doctors who will only take a certain number of patients under Medicare or any government-based healthcare initiative. Some doctors don't accept the coverage AT ALL. Nowadays it costs so much to place a family under good healthcare that some are resorted to do part good and part government. Families shouldn't have to choose who gets the good healthcare and who gets the tolerable healthcare.

So what is the solution government? Do you tell the man who's working two or three jobs that his child, children or wife cannot get healthcare because it'll cost him too much? Or do we tell the single mother that's already on welfare trying to do the best she can that you're "sorry" but the only healthcare options available will mean she needs to choose between eating, where to sleep, or getting a better job? Perhaps we just tell the rich to foot the entire bill since that will be "fair" in terms of the balance of wealth in our country. We're looking to you to provide us a solution.

Maybe... just maybe... part of the solution is that we stop putting chemicals in our food, and introducing all of these drugs that have side effects that your laboratories didn't account for. That may be the cause of some of these hormonal imbalances in our youth, and food allergies, and medical conditions that we currently have today. Maybe... just maybe... people wouldn't need as much healthcare if government started to address the problems of food and agriculture, drugs, and other such problems that have crept into our country over the last century or so.

Am I saying the government is to blame? No, not necessarily, but they are the ones in charge. What I'm saying is that reform for healthcare is almost like treating the symptom and not dealing with the root. I believe that the root of the problem isn't bad healthcare, but an economy that's failing around us. Also you must consider that we're telling people to eat certain things and take certain medications and we're wondering why all these conditions are present that we need drugs and treatments for in the first place... that cost thousands upon thousands of dollars. It's just a bad cycle all around. I don't recall hearing about half of these problems from my grandmother by the way.

I want my children to grow up in a world where healthcare is a right and an option. If they want it, they can get it at a fair cost. I want them to also grow up in a world eating the right things, getting the right exercise, and being... children... teenagers... adults... that are healthy, wealthy and wise. I'm not saying that healthcare is the end-all and even if there is a reform that is manageable and helpful for the consensus as a whole, there are still other roots that need to be removed. Trimming the leaves makes the tree look great, but if the roots are rotten, eventually... the tree will die. So will our country's future.

Sources:

The National Coalition on Healthcare | Facts about Healthcare - Health Insurance Coverage
http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml

PreventDisease.com - Health Care Statistics
http://preventdisease.com/worksite_wellness/health_stats.html

CNN Political Ticker - All politics, all the time Health care Fact Check
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/health-care-fact-check/