Wrong approach on health care

I know this is supposed to be good news, and I guess it is. But the reality is that the deficit is a red herring in the healthcare debate. It’s not about the deficit, but about the way we spend our healthcare dollars.

We spend one out of every six dollars in our economy on health care — an astronomical number that is almost 50 percent higher than the average industrialized nation. And yet we have nearly 50 million uninsured and we rank on the lower end of the health scales.

We spend plenty. The questions are who gets the money and what we spend it on. Right now, the bulk of the cash flows through the insurance companies, who skim big money from the top before passing it along to Big Pharma and doctors who push unnecessary drugs, tests and treatments.

The Baucus bill leaves this dynamic place.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

2 thoughts on “Wrong approach on health care”

  2. There ain't no \”we\” except in the mind of socialists. The deficit does matter. Our progeny are going to be serfs to this debt.They congresscritters are LYING about the costs. No congressional estimate has ever been even close. We have the Soviet Union as a lab experiment on socialism. All the bills still leave 10-40 million uninsured. SO, let's not pretend that this is about \”getting everyone insured\”. It's about control. It's about power. It's about making money for them and their buddies.No thanks. And, they ARE going to CUT meidcare 500M$. While the enrollment jumps. Where's the utrage about that \”cut\”?Argh!

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