Fixing health care before we're all bankrupt

By Camille "Bud" George

Per capita health-care costs jumped 90 percent between 1993 and 2005. We're paying twice as much as countries that insure all its citizens. In return for our hard-earned money, we face higher infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy and an inferior product.

Sixty-three years later, America is still waiting ... and withering.

There's no silver lining in our bankrupt-a-country health-care system except for the riches that private insurance and pharmaceutical companies are leeching from America's well-being.

The president of the National Coalition on Health Care said it best: "The crisis in health care is the central economic problem facing America -- adversely affecting living standards, job creation and retention, wage growth, the adequacy and viability of pension benefits" and the global competitiveness of American business.

Some 45 million Americans are uninsured, including some 700,000 Pennsylvanians.

U.S. health spending per person is more than twice the average of such spending in Canada, France, Italy and Britain -- countries that guarantee health care for all their citizens.

Having among the costliest health-care systems in the universe has not ensured quality. The U.S. trails in satisfaction and outcomes. We're a laggard in life expectancy and an embarrassment in child mortality rates.

Businesses can't afford this runaway, Rube Goldberg machine that chews up money, families and businesses and spits out despair. Automakers say health costs add $1,600 to the price of a vehicle. Small businesses can't stay viable and still offer health care to workers.

Our health-care professionals are suffering dearly. No one wants doctors or nurses to be bean-counters, preoccupied with mountains of red tape and arcane insurance rules. We count on them to preserve and protect lives, yet many doctors have seen their incomes level off as their paperwork and bureaucratic headaches skyrocket.

I wrote once that some conservatives put up a "free market" blockade whenever ideas are floated to make health care fairer to all Americans. As Robert Bazell of MSNBC noted, "America remains the only industrialized country where financing health is not considered a government function like building highways and supporting national defense."

We're engaged in "nation building" -- including establishing health care -- in countless corners of the Third World, but financing health care at home is un-American?

I now believe those still trotting out the "free market" excuse are merely shills for the very few companies benefiting from the health-care boondoggle. It's no longer a case of a government that puts corporate interests over the interests of its citizens because now most businesses realize it's their ox that is being gored.

And I still say there is nothing American about a system that gouges its people and our national well-being.

A much stronger argument could be made that the U.S. Constitution explicitly warrants changes. "To form a more perfect union" and "promote the general welfare" are among the pillars that our Founding Fathers used to write the Constitution.

Harry Truman was known for his straight talk. After 60 years, it's time everyone listened.

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