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Edited on Fri Aug-14-09 09:25 AM by SoCalDem
The health care "expos" that are going on around the country, point to another problem we have. It's a problem that most are covering incorrectly.
The former Aetna executive who saw & reported on one in Appalachia, touched on it, and now there's another one going on here in Inglewood, CA.
THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people are showing up for free health care.. They are waiting in the hot sun, for a chance to see a doctor or a dentist. They are getting vision tests too.
The media is showing some of it, because it's newsworthy, BUT they stop there.
The altruism of the doctors, nurses & aides is commendable, but these people should not HAVE to donate their time & money to care for poor people, in the "richest country" in the world (as we like to call ourselves).
It would appear that becoming a doctor or nurse may start out as a dream to "do good", and that somewhere along the line, a schism happens in the medical community, and some doctors peel off to become "rich". The true altruists of the medical community end up carrying a much heavier load, because their consciences and their calling, push them to always do "more". These dedicated people are also in the process of burning themselves out.
The fact that they willingly donate their time, expertise, energy and even money, is covering for the obvious lack of public responsibility. Once "someone else" does a task, many just shrug & say "Whew, now WE don't have to do that".
I have NOTHING against volunteerism, but this is something else.
Schools feel perfectly justified in having mass lay- offs, and then "demand" more parental participation, or volunteers. Every paid position they can eliminate, and replace with a non-paid volunteer, means more money is available to be spread around to those at the "top".
Social Services agencies routinely cut poor people from various programs, as they change the "requirements" for participation, and then push these people into food pantries that are understocked even in the best of times. They deny housing to poor people, and shove them into their cars, vans & into tents, while houses sit empty (their values dropping daily, as they are vandalized). The "positive effect" of these actions, comes when the politicians responsible crow about being "fiscally responsible", and brag about how they CUT "waste".
The "waste & fat" they cut, are PEOPLE...poor people.
Doctors & nurses with a social conscience are stepping into the void in health care because no one else will, and because they feel obligated to fulfill their Hippocratic Oath, and "the state" breathes another sigh of relief because now THEY are off the hook with yet another public obligation they have failed to meet.
I wonder how many of our "leaders" are thinking about how this looks to the rest of the world. Doctors who may have (in the past) come to the impoverished 3rd world countries, to donate some medical treatments, are now fanning out across the richest country in the world, to donate care to its own citizens, while insurance fatcats & hospital corporation vampires & big-pharma hyenas are raking in the dough by the hundreds of thousands per hour, and naming buildings after themselves instead of helping medically-deprived fellow citizens.
These same corporate robber-barons are blowing through premium payments made by "the little people", to fund low-information voters' Town Brawl disruptions, just so the fat-cats can eventually cut off coverage or under-provide services to those same people. What a laugh-fest must be going on in the boardrooms!
The money they are throwing at disruption of necessary changes in medical care delivery systems, would fund many a Health Expo....or better yet, eliminate the NEED for them.
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