[Note: This is not the usual post on First 50 Words. Normally there is a writing prompt and readers are asked to write briefly about that prompt. The writing prompt rules are suspended for today.]
Health insurance needs to be banned in the United States. Outlawed. Extinct. Kaput.
Plans to help more people get health insurance won’t work. What we need is a plan to help people get health care. We don’t need changes in plans that involve profit making corporations in health care decisions. We need a brand new system that does not involve profit making corporations in health care decisions.
We need a health care system where no one will be denied coverage. We need a health care system where a pre-existing condition will not stop any hospital or doctor from caring for a patient’s current needs.
We need a health care system where no one will be denied necessary procedures. We need a health care system where doctors can perform procedures when they are deemed medically necessary, not when some profit making corporation approves them.
We need a health care system where people won’t have to decide between paying for life saving medication or feeding their children and paying the mortgage. We need a prescription program where the medications necessary for good health and continued life are available inexpensively to all.
We need a health care system where recognized health dangers such as toxins in the products in our stores, poisons in the food we buy, pollution in the air and water, and dangerous metals and chemicals in the soil are treated as health issues and regulated accordingly.
We need a health care system remade completely new, not a make-over of the health insurance industry. Democrats, hear our plea. Do the right thing for the people of America.
First 50 Words - Prompts for Writing Practice 
I agree with what you have written. I no longer believe in the myth that health insurance can provide me with the health care I need. We do need more affordable health care and common sense.
Excellent plea! What has this country come to that the citizens must plea with those we pay to look after our best interests to do so?
Amen. But it won’t happen. The big money is too big. Scientific American, in an article on 2.26.08 said that “Economists at the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, forecast that health-care spending will account for 19.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2017, up from 16.3 percent in 2007.” That’s a huge chunk of our country’s economy going to one industry. I wonder what chunk the oil industry claims? (another pet peeve of mine–why are the oil companies allowed to make record profits while we pay record prices at the pumps?)
So basically, make it illegal to deny a claim. Seems simple enough. Sadly, I agree that the money is too much, too old, and too powerful.
People forget there was a time health insurance didn’t exist, and mostly we were fine. While times have changed and the odl way likely isn’t feasible the current way is just as flawed.
As far as oil prices, with high prices should come high profits. The question is, why is the price so damned high? Manipulation.
That is an unbelievably important distinction you are making. Getting everybody health insurance means either a big government solution or helpiing to enrich the health insurance industry without the guarantee that people will receive the health care they need.
One hundred years ago most people in this country did have healthcare. They paid the doctor however they could (sometimes in chickens) and the doctor provided the service.
Since the insertion of the health insurance system into that relationship, costs have forever spiraled upwards.
Great, great post.
Ray
yes, we need a single-payer system like the one described here — http://pnhp.org/. perhaps there’s a group near you. HR 676 has been languishing in congress for serveral years and my hope is that the depth of the problem will push aside insurance companies.
of course, i’m pretty utopian!
Thanks for the link to PNHP, Naomi. I signed the Open Letter and have bookmarked the site.