Not Ready for Prime Time Health Care

President Trump is stymied: “Now I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject.  Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” 

What has obviously dawned on Donald J. Trump is the fact that it will be virtually impossible to provide yet another market-based health care system that will lower costs and at the same time provide health care coverage for all Americans.  That’s what he has been promising and now the reality of that impossibility has hit him right square in the kisser.  He is now under pressure to choose a side.  Trump is NOW keenly aware that he canNOT, under a market-based program, lower skyrocketing premiums and protect people from going broke and still prevent them from dying needlessly because they are without health care coverage and/or the financial means necessary to stay alive.

SO, let’s just forget about the whys, wherefores and thou arts and just focus on this reality.  PRIVATE HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS DO NOT WORK in America – Period!  Those systems have had every opportunity to flourish in serving the common good and general welfare of our nation and they have failed. PERIOD!

In the link below we are introduced to Doctor Ezekiel Emanuel, a key architect of “The Affordable Care Act.”  His presentation is particularly troublesome is one regard and extremely infuriating in another regard. 

What is troublesome is his unwillingness to admit how woefully inadequate “The Affordable Care Act” has been.  He will only charge that the mechanisms surrounding the act are the culprits (i.e.; the rollout program) but refuses to accept any responsibility for the awful shortcomings in the legislation itself.  To him, none exist.  With this as his basis for credibility, we now come to the real outrage in the man’s thinking and some powerful insight as to why our health care system has failed to adequately meet humane needs.  

 On a universal single payer health care program, he unequivocally states; “not gonna happen.  This is America.” “Ain’t gonna happen” “Can’t happen” “Will never happen.” He repeats it over and over again in his attempt to browbeat us into accepting his narrow-minded contention that a single payer system is impossible to achieve in America. 

 Impossible? I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E? !!!!!  Really?

 We were thirteen tiny colonies that thought we could win a war against the most powerful country in the world to gain our independence.  Guess what many believed?  YEP - “Can’t happen.”   

 We’re the country that ended slavery and dispelled the Jim Crow doctrines amid chants of; “Ain’t gonna happen.”  America won two world wars and found a cure for polio. The country that instituted Social Security, Medicare Medicaid and sent men to the moon and safely retuned them to earth among the endless drum beat of; No way - “Will never happen.” And the exact same battle cry was sounded regarding innumerable other government programs which benefit each and every American each and every day.  

For sure, it “Ain’t gonna happen” in the next four years, BUT “Will never happen.”???  With bright, energetic and creative leadership and an enlightened electorate committed to the ideals and principles of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson it is guaranteed to happen. 

 “Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?”  ~ Robert F. Kennedy 

You are correct doctor.  “This is America” and in America nothing is impossible.  We the people determine what is possible and not a narrow-minded, arrogant doctor who refuses to acknowledge that “for profit” market-based health care systems are responsible for the American failures that have caused, and are continuing to cause, needless bankruptcies, pain, and deaths.    

 Impossible for America to adopt a similar health care system that every other industrialized nation on earth has adopted? - Systems that humanly serve their populations so very admirably.  Only through ambivalence, malaise and apathy can “We the people” fail and not because it is impossible.  

 In the final analysis it is not impossible to provide far better coverage at lower costs for ALL Americans.  It just can’t be accomplished through a market-based system nor can it be accomplished with pitiful and regressive thinking of; “Not gonna happen,” “Ain’t gonna happen,” “Can’t happen,” “Will never happen.”  

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/02/09/mpr_news_presents