Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Obama and Congress must fix America’s health system


How fitting that the first organized opposition to President Obama's ambitious health care reform program should come from a man who symbolizes the very antipathy to controlling health costs.

Rick Scott has founded "Conservatives for Patients' Rights" to spread fear about Obama's creating a socialized medical system. Multimillionaire Scott was fired as CEO of Columbia/HCA, an enormous health care corporation that pleaded guilty and was fined a whopping $1.7 billion for over-billing state and federal health plans.

The integrity-short Scott has hired a like-minded smear merchant, CRC Public Relations, to produce his propaganda. CRC is the outfit that masterminded the 2004 slanders that John Kerry was a phony war hero and dreamed up the "Harry and Louise" TV commercials that helped sabotage earlier health care reforms.

Of all domestic problems, health care is the biggest, the costliest and the most threatening to civic life. A nation unable or unwilling to provide proper health care is a nation in decline.

Although the nation spends more than 17 percent of its gross economic product on health care, millions are uninsured and unable to obtain proper care. At least 45 million people spend 10 percent of their pre-tax income on health care.

Fraud permeates the system.

Costs are duplicated through "defensive" medical procedures to protect physicians from negligence lawsuits, and through repetitive exams that could be avoided with computerized national records allowing doctors to check a patient's history anywhere in the country.

The burden of unjustifiably high costs falls on businesses and families who are telling government that they need relief.

Health reform must include rigorous preventive medical and wellness programs as part of insurance programs to reduce the need for medical treatment. For example, reducing the scourge of diabetes through better nutrition and exercise, and scaling back heart ailments with no-smoking campaigns and nutrition would spare the nation billions in health costs.

Alternative treatments that lower costs should be studied and explained to patients.

The first encouraging sign of a break from the past came when a collection of health industries promised President Obama savings of $2 trillion in costs over 10 years.

If this president and this Congress fail again to reform health care because of greed and narrow corporate self-interest, avoiding illness and finding cures to catastrophic disease in time will be denied to most Americans and reserved as luxuries for only the wealthiest families.




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