Health Care is Broken and No One Will Fix It

The White House will proudly announce a modest reduction of the federal deficit for this fiscal year, but it probably won't mention our current budgetary policy is "totally unsustainable." According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budge Office, health care costs are inflating so rapidly that Medicare and Medicaid expenses will consume the ENTIRE Federal budget by 2050. The last three CBO directors have all highlighted the impending health care train wreck, but Washington remains deafeningly silent. Not one of the major Democratic Presidential candidates is willing to go after the root cause of the problem: the free market. You don't have to watch Michael Moore's latest documentary, Sicko, to know that the for-profit health care system is an absolute disaster.

Insurance companies are the biggest problem. They maximize their profit when they minimize the claims they pay out, which means they have a strong incentive to weasel out of paying those chemotherapy bills and an even stronger disincentive to cover sick people. That means lots of people just can't get coverage to begin with.

Of course, people with no health insurance still get sick, but when they do instead of going to a family physician they have to tough it out and hope they get better. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they end up in the emergency room and up to their eyeballs in medical bills they can't possibly pay. And how for-profit hospitals make up their losses from treating sick poor? By jacking up prices on people who can pay--people with insurance. The result is more costly insurance, which leads to more companies dropping coverage, and the spiral of doom continues.

Drug companies just add to the absurdity. While millions around the world die from infectious disease, our best and brightest drug researchers are focused on erectile dysfunction and restless leg syndrome because those drugs are more profitable. But the free market doesn't just distract drug companies from curing disease; it actually DISCOURAGES them. Why would you want to make a $200 vaccine for an illness when you could make a $200 pill that people will have to take for the rest of their lives?

Yet, despite these obvious and well-established arguments, not one major candidate for President wants to fix the problem. John Edwards wants one America, but he doesn't want single payer health care. Instead he wants to stick with the same broken, employer-based system. Barack Obama offers a similar plan with more focus on subsidizing insurance costs, fueling the problem by propping up the crumbling system. Hillary Clinton hasn't released a detailed plan yet, but she's been talking about putting restrictions on insurance companies so it's clear she's not even considering a wholesale change.

The ONLY candidate in the race with a rational health care plan that will actually CHANGE things is Dennis Kucinich. I don't support Mr. Kucinich because I disagree with him on half a dozen other issues, but it absolutely kills me that he's the only one with the guts to stand up on this critical issue.