An extraordinary report from Guy Adams in Los Angeles at the music arena that has been turned into a makeshift medical center
They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.
In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.
The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.
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Tags: Healthcare, US Medical System
Giving people things for free is how you make them dependents. There are no good ways to avoid this fact, except to empower people to earn and purchase their own commodities. Like Healthcare.
RogMaha
RogMaha,
The United States is the only major western industrial power to not have socialized medicine.
It is inexplicable that 46 million people have no health-care when they live in the richest nation on the face of the earth.
46 million people who are just a heart-beat or a breath away from bankruptcy and economic devastation of they develop a major medical problem.
Canada, Britain, Norway, Sweden, France, New Zealand, The Netherlands and the list goes on. They all believe it is an appropriate role for government to provide some minimum level of health care for their people.
They have not all turned into nations of ‘gimme-gimme’ zombies.
The real question is, ‘What is should be the function of a national government?” I believe the answer is to work for the optimal benefit of its own people – all of them.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has been so deeply captured by large corporate interests, that our government now is more about providing an optimal playing field upon which corporations can grow their wealth by extracting it from the people and less about doing what’s best for the American people.
I believe that most of this ‘fire and smoke’ against health care reform in the U.S. is being created by powerful profit driven corporate interests who are protecting their profits sources. And that the smart folks upstairs in the efforts are cynically manipulating a larger and far simpler group of conservative-minded folks below to get out and agitate because they are being told that the “government’s going to kill Grandma” and other outrageous lies.
So, where does that put you, my dear comment writer? You are either a hired shill of one of the corporate interests, paid to go around to Blog after Blog spreading misinformation and confusion, or you are simple and sincere – and one of the duped.
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
– Upton Sinclair
All,
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SOCIAL_SECURITY_SMALLER_CHECKS?SITE=AZPHG&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
I have attached this link because it is very germane to this topic. This is what happens when Uncle Sam takes it on. SS is supposed to be a fund. There is no fund; the US government has stolen the money. Now it is bankrupt. Beyond that, it is now being offered to illegal aliens.
Even if you provide expanded health care, it is dubious at best as to whom it extends to, how it will be administered and how much it will cost.
It is impossible to talk about other countries and compare it to the US. We have the highest cost per person for medical care in the world. Medical insurance will not fix that. And, given our financial debacle, we will not be able to afford it.
The AMA along with the American Bar Association are thieves. The AMA limits the number of doctors available; the ABA sues every doctor in sight, thus raising the cost of providing health care to unsustainable levels. I have not even touched on the drug industry that is a disguised monopoly. They give drugs away around the world to look good and, at the same time, pass that cost to US consumers. If you do not believe that, then why do the same prescription drugs cost so much less in Canada. Because the R&D costs are all put against the US sales. In effect we subsidize the Canadian prescription drug industry.
So, if you want to do something, you must fix the broken process before you start expanding Government Control over something they allowed to become broken to begin with.
Also, the US might be the most indebted nation in the world, but certainly not the richest. The USA is bankrupt. If it were any kind of company, the leaders would be in jail.
M
I’m with you all the way down the line, M.
Dennis