Best Healthcare Reform Option

…Give All Citizens Medicare

Congress is set to finalize the House and Senate versions of the current so-called Healthcare Reform bills. I have little faith that anything meaningful will come of it (by ‘meaningful ‘ I mean benefiting the citizens, not the corporations). Sadly, too many of our lawmakers are on the corporate dole, taking thousands from the Healthcare Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries. Between the obstructionist regressive Republicans and the spineless ‘let’s compromise’ Democrats it seems almost guaranteed it will be corporations, not citizens that will see anything positive from all these months of political lip-flapping.

If there is any ‘final’ bill, it will be watered down and compromised so much that having no bill at all will likely to be better than the horrific monster we may end up with. This is especially true if Congress refuses to enact strong oversight laws, fails to abolish the price-gouging and price fixing currently ‘legal’ for healthcare insurance providers and give in completely to their corporate insurance industry masters and make it mandatory for all citizens to purchase healthcare insurance—this is a very, very bad idea that will put billions of dollars more into the coffers of the greedy insurance industry, penalize our citizens with higher rates and taxes, and guarantee rate hikes. With all that and much more to consider, I think the best idea for healthcare reform that benefits all our citizens is to move immediately into a single-payer, government run system. The infrastructure for such a system is already in place. It is called Medicare.