Friday, March 26, 2010

Obama Health Care - Fact and Fiction

Here is a great table of Myth vs Fact regarding the health care bill recently signed into law by President Obama. Scroll down a little to see the chart: Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill.

Personal Comment:
I grew up with the National Health system in Britain and I was very thankful that it existed. My personal opinion is that health care, like education is not something that should be run for profit. It is too intimate to the welfare of a country and its people.

The purpose of health care should be to help people get and stay well. The purpose of the US health care system is to may a big fat juicy profit. Making a profit in this field is at odds with helping people get and stay well. You don't make money from well people, you make a profit from sick people and from people who are forced to take a medication for the rest of their lives. This tends to make you ignore successful alternatives that don't cost a lot of money such as life-style and dietary changes.

Thus the system is not being run for the right reasons and thus the abuses that people complain about. So, I would support the introduction of a system in the US similar to those in other modern Western countries such as Britain.

Every system has its failings, but the current US system has way too many and should be drastically reformed. Unfortunately, the Obama Health Care bill simply puts more money into the pockets of the insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry and medical industry and does almost nothing for the people who need health care the most.