We Need A Public Health Care Option Now

My father had a comment when he would hear people on TV talk about labor saving devices. He would ask, "whose labor are we saving?"

I find a common thread running through the health care debate and the need for better regulation, transparency and enforcement of the banking and investment banking industry. The insurance companies that sell health care policies are run by a few large companies. After going on Medicare, I received sales literature from, I think, everyone that sold a health care policy. The banking and investment banking industries are dominated by a few large companies. These large companies have the resources to lobby Congress and make their positions known about any health care reform that would hurt their business. Selling healthcare insurance is a business for profit. What about all the people that buy health insurance? Who speaks for them? Not only can these insurance companies pick and chose, they are even helped by the fact that the consumer can not shop for a better bargain outside his or her own state. Where is free enterprise when it comes to shopping for a cheaper health insurance policy?

But, the big companies that want the game to remain the way it is, on a playing field that is tilted in their favor, have put out so much misinformation and lies that the people that are the most fearful are their biggest tools of support. Yes, health care in America is the third rail of politics right now, but I am hoping that the economics of health care for our nation will cause even those that can not put themselves in the place of others less fortunate, to see and understand that a solution to our problem of the uninsured is costing all of us unnecessarily. Our country needs a national health care option, and we need it very soon, in fact, we need it right now.

Stay tuned.