Healing Our Sick Health Care System

I was recently sent a review copy of Dr. Robert Gumbiner's Healing Our Sick Health Care System - A Solution to America's Health Care Crisis. It's a another proposal for universal health care, and many voices will be raised against the idea when it returns to the table for discussion inside the beltway. But let's face it, the realities are disturbing. Michael Moore's film Sicko showed some of the reality. People's lives are being destroyed by our current system of "for profit" hospitals, drug companies and insurance companies. It's a gigantic racket, but these racketeers are not going to jail for their crimes. Rather, they are buying condos in the Caymans.

According to Gumbiner, the health care system is a dysfunctional mess with entrenched special interests. But our legislators in Washington do not have the courage to overturn the applecart, and are tacitly committed to maintaining the status quo because it is "safe." As with most other major issues on the table, there's a lot of jawboning going on, but the masses suffer.

Americans believe they have the best health care in the world. But as Gumbiner writes, "How can it be the 'best' when adequate health care is unavailable to millions of people?"

Like many such books, this one begins by citing stats about our current situation, followed by a chapter outlining the history that has lead to us to where we are today and why small reforms will not solve our major problems.

I once heard a story that illustrates the problem. A man was fleeing from an adversary and came to a place where there was a twenty foot gap and five hundred foot drop. He could either find a way to make the twenty foot leap, or take two to three smaller steps. We all know what the result of small steps over a twenty foot gap would bring.

One of the biggest arguments against universal health care is that we as a nation could never afford it. But in point of fact, Gumbiner notes, more than two-thirds of all Americans have some or all of their health care paid for by taxpayer dollars. This includes, federal, state, county and local employees plus our military personnel, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. In short, the picture very different from the one we are mislead to believe.

Alas, if the situation makes you ill, you are not alone.