Commentary: Overhaul health care now

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/28/88418/commentary-overhaul-health-care.html

Commentary: Overhaul health care now
By Isaac Bailey | The Myrtle Beach Sun


While taking in the bipartisan, televised health care summit at the White House or wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the event, don't forget two salient facts reported by prominent health care writer Jonathan Cohn in his illuminating book, "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis — And The People Who Pay The Price:"

Medicare was created decades ago because the private market was horribly failing seniors most in need of help.

Insuring large numbers of the riskiest — sickest — patients was bad for business.

Medicare's creation also rapidly increased the number of for-profit hospitals who kept Wall Street happy by maximizing profits by benefitting from "Medicare largesse" and skimping on care to the poor.

Those two facts illustrate why government intervention is necessary but also less than ideal, a complex reality proponents and opponents of health care reform are loath to admit.

But the broader reality none of us can afford to deny is this:

Unless something radically changes, health care costs will bankrupt the country.

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We can return to the angry town hall meetings and casually throw around terms such as socialism and death panels and rationing or we can get serious about fixing a growing problem that has the potential to bring us all down if we aren't willing to struggle to find a collective, even if imperfect, solution.