Few people actually oppose “healthcare” reform, not even the insurance companies. No, the hullabaloo is all over “healthcare” insurance—aka… the MONEY!

 

Huge profits have been the status quo for decades and neither the insurance companies that reap them nor the politicians that receive huge campaign contributions from those companies are going away peaceably.

 

The fact is that this country owns the best medical technology the world has ever seen. But, what good is it if the bulk of those who need it the most can’t afford it?

 

We spend almost twice as much on healthcare per capita as all of the other industrialized countries. Yet, we’re generally sicker—in almost all categories of illness—and have higher infant mortality rates.

 

These facts are all over the Internet. Just use good old Google. Click here; and this is just one site!

 

If you’re objective in a search for the truth about this topic, you can’t help but notice that the evidence FOR reform absolutely trumps evidence to the contrary.

 

We’re doing something WRONG! So, the question is why all the partisan bickering, much of it downright personal and some of it borderline violent? Here’s what I think.

 

First, we have to realize that we’re light-years from an effective healthcare delivery system. What we DO have is a national sick call system. And, even this is substandard and highly expensive.

 

I spent the day, most of it, anyway, with an 84-year-old neighbor (very well insured) in a local hospital emergency room. She began feeling dizzy and weak. She called her doctor who told her to get to the hospital immediately.

 

He suspected internal bleeding. She’s on a regimen of blood-thinners too long to describe here. Anyway, off we flew to the emergency room.

 

Of course, they took her right away due to her medical history and the nature of her symptoms. However, it took close to 6-hours of TESTING before they made a decision to admit her.

 

Guess who got to wait—every blasted second of those 6-hours—in the waiting area of that emergency room?

 

There were—I counted them—seventy-one people in the waiting room when we arrived. It took the medical staff less than ten-minutes to evaluate my neighbor and get her back to an examination room.

 

During the six-hours that I remained in that room, an additional 90-people came in and checked in with the medical staff at the front desk. So, some 161 people moved through that process at absolute glacial speed!

 

Now, I’m a scientist. And, even though I’m long retired, research is STILL cursing through my veins. So, I don’t sit around reading People Magazine. Horrendously outdated issues at that!

 

No, I did research by observing and asking questions. But, I’m not going to bore you with the results. And, I will tell you that there was not a single genuine emergency in that waiting room.

 

Even more astounding is the fact that I KNEW this even before I began observing and asking questions. Here’s how.

 

Emergency room medical and clerical personnel are highly trained to spot genuine emergencies. The emergencies brought to the facility by ambulance are taken to examining rooms immediately.

 

The medical folks at the waiting room check-in station are experts at identifying the genuine emergencies among the walk-ins brought to the facility by private vehicles.

 

Within a matter of a few minutes of check-in, these cases are also whisked back to examining rooms for further evaluation by specialized emergency room doctors, nurses, and medical technicians.

 

So, if you’ve finished checking in at the waiting room check-in station and the staff has told you to take a seat and wait, there’s not a thing wrong with you that any general medical aid station could not handle.

 

In northern New Castle County, Delaware, we have no less than four of them. They can handle tons of stuff, as long as it’s not a life-threatening emergency.

 

So, why didn’t these people go to one of these? It's simple. Medical aid stations require potential patients to have either cash to pay for treatment or valid medical insurance BEFORE rendering service.

 

Hospital emergency rooms MUST, by law, treat you, whether you have cash in hand, valid medical insurance, NO medical insurance, and/or are dead broke.

 

Consequently, our nation’s hospital emergency rooms end up as nothing but glorified medical aid/sick call stations treating anything from minor cuts and bruises to more serious—but certainly not emergency—ailments. And, they do it at a cost of multiple hundreds, and sometime thousands, of dollars per case.

 

Let me repeat; we have a massive—INEFFECTIVE AT THAT—sick call system, not an efficient healthcare delivery system. People have to stop confusing these with effective healthcare delivery systems.

 

The alleged debate over healthcare reform is a joke. The proponents of the status-quo will go to whichever lengths necessary to thwart change. Wildly distorted claims and outright lies—on both sides—have become the order of the day.

 

Both sides of this issue—emphasis on BOTH—have hired their own “experts.” And, thanks to the 24-hour cable TV news cycle, the intrepid windbags have taken over.

 

They’re well-paid surrogates for partisan politicians that, instead of substantive reporting, will feed us a steady diet of “gotchas,” through the effective use of obfuscation, misdirection, and utter lies.

 

Little, if anything, these self-serving idiots say has anything whatsoever to do with this country’s future or well-being. At best, their pontifications amount to a diarrhea of words expressing an acute constipation of thought.

 

It used to be in this country that people could tell the difference between inconveniences and problems.

 

Needing to work two jobs to meet some worthwhile expenses was an inconvenience. Working all day and going to school at night to get ahead was an inconvenience. These were worth the effort and people did them.

 

Today, however, things are quite different. Many people are working two full-time jobs just to meet basic living expenses for their families.

 

About 47-million of them (adults and children) either through the loss of employment or never having had it, have no access to basic healthcare other than through charity or some other philanthropic source.

 

An elderly woman—she had to be in her late 70s—informed me, rather emphatically, that when it comes to healthcare, “Glenn Beck gets it.”

 

I’m not sure what it is that she thinks Glenn Beck gets, but I’ve tried… REALLY TRIED… to listen to him a few times and I doubt that he gets very much of anything, let alone the crux of the healthcare problem.

 

Glenn Beck notwithstanding, people need to be careful about proclaiming who gets what. The fact is that their heroes may not get squat about the subject matter at hand.

 

However, many of us DO have a tendency to admire the astuteness of people who agree with US, even if such folks appear to be utterly complete clueless dolts.

 

Relative to basic healthcare, it boils down to two questions for me. First, does every venture within a capitalistic system have to turn a profit? And, second, should basic healthcare be an absolute right by virtue of citizenship or a relative right by virtue of employment or an independent ability to pay for it?

 

In reference to the first question, the answer for me is NO. And, well-versed business people know it.

 

If the added productivity justifies it—effective healthcare delivery (free or otherwise) will increase national productivity substantially—chalk it up to necessary overhead. Businesses do it all the time.

 

In reference to the second question, the answer for me is that it should be an absolute right.

 

Working two jobs, or even three, to make ends meet may be a temporary inconvenience—or even a permanent one—but having to watch a loving child or other family member waist away to nothing for lack of health insurance is certainly a PROBLEM, not an inconvenience.

 

In the days of my youth, Senators and Representatives settled honest disagreements intelligently, using rhetorical bludgeons instead of “gotcha” semantics.

 

It was debate at its finest. And, at times, it was even entertaining. But at the end of the day, these people settled on reasonable compromises and things got done for the good of the country.

 

We need to get back to more of that kind of politicking and fast. If not, we’re just kidding ourselves.

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.