National Healthcare?

Here we go again, election year and now we gotta have national health care(or not depending on your party affiliation), and we gotta have it now.

Do we? IS HEALTH CARE A RIGHT?

Lets ask a couple of questions. Does everyone "deserve" healthcare, the best we have to offer, all of the gifts God has graced us with, the latest technology all despite race, creed, color...........or ability to pay? AHA! Gotcha. This really is a philisophical and sort of societal question.

One one hand, dont we all deserve the best life improving and sustaining(if necessary) technology and care available? Should I get better cancer treatment or medicines that are clearly more effective just because I make more money than you, or because I have better political connections, or am the the right race or religion? Why hell no!

Should our veterans be forced to accept less affective medicines and rationing of care after the promises we made as they risked life and limb for this country. Doesnt seem right to me.

On the other hand who pays for all of this? Its obvious the poor can't, it's difficult and crippling at times for the middle class. Should the wealthy bear the brunt of a nationalized program because they work hard and make money?

Lets be clear here, we do have "nationalized" if you will, healhcare. It is an inefficient hodgepodge and makes no sense in its discrimination...but we do have it.

The Emergency Room is your garunteed access to "free" healthcare. It is no secret to most of the public that if you show up at an E.R. the staff has a legal obligation to treat you. If you never intend on paying your bill, and show up over and over, you are still gonna get your free checkup and treatment. You may get hounded over the bill, have to wait a looong time, but you can get your freebie. I am not talking about the heart attacks, traumas, and genuine emergencies here. I am talking about the MULTITUDE of common colds, back pain, hypertension, diabetes and exacerbations of other problems. Dont have a doctor? Can't afford one(cause your cigarettes cost to much)? Just need a work or school excuse? "Just wanna get checked out"? Come one come all, you can get it all at the E.R.

Next we have the conglomeration of mediciad, medicaire, and private and employer provided/subsidized insurance.

All of these entities suffer from abuse by doctors and hospitals(creative billing) and by patients(too damn lazy to buy some tylenol so they come to the E.R. with a "fever" of 99 degrees or just don't take their medicines...or just keep smoking, and so on), and by the gargantuan beauracracy/goverment than burdens it down with asanine paperwork and regulations written by people that dont know a damn thing about how things are in the real world.

Yes Virginia...there is a "nationized healthcare system" and it sucks. It began to suck tremendously when Nixon thought letting HMO's make money off a system already squeezed was a capital idea. What in the hell have HMO'S,PPO's and the rest of the alphabet soup done to make the system better? I submit not one damn thing....their promises of better care, "maintainance", and cost controlls were a joke then, as they are now. The profits of these companies speak volumes, especially when the unethical practices by which they make their blood money are reviewed.

So what to do? I say bite the bullet, take all these pieces and put the money into a system that truly attempts to provide some semblence of universal care. Sounds good huh? Not so fast skippy. We as Americans want our CT scans MRI's Cardiac Caths hip replacements skin biopsies etc etc etc...and we want the YESTERDAY. Why should we have to wait? Well get ready cause if you want everyone to have the same access some of those things will wait, be prioritized if you will. Need a cardiac catheterization to figure out that pesky non emergent chest pain? Go home, quit smoking, take your medicine and we will call you when your number comes up. Same thing with that stiff damn hip, take some tylenol and we will get to you in time. Gotta do the ones that fell or broke them in a car wreck first. You gonna stand for that my fellow americans??? LOL...I doubt it. Hmmmm, not quite utopia is it?

There will never be a perfect way to provide everything to everyone in a way that makes all people happy. We will ultimately end up with a two tiered system. A "socialized" system that provides the basics, but you gotta wait your turn, and the doctors will be salaried employees. On the other side will be people that can afford supplemental and/or private policies so they can go where and when they want to get their health care. Thats how its gonna work folks.

Suck it up America and decide...do we all have a "right" to the same access to healthcare or not? Are we just gonna leave the putrid cesspool of a system as it is or bite the bullet and put something together that works a little better? As long as there are profits to be made, and politicians to to be bribed...oops, lobbied, I think we are gonna have a tough time seeing any meaningful change, it's profit driven and thats a powerful thing.

I could be wrong.....but I'm not.