One often but not always learns best by comparisons with others. For example, in every other civilized industrialized country in this world, health care is a right, not a privilege, and is provided by the government to everyone in that country, even to visitors. By this reasoning, I came to the conclusion years ago (especially in the last 8 years) that our country must not be civilized, at least from this point of view. But then Obama was elected and I saw some hope on the horizon. I must admit that he has not been perfect. He appears to have been swayed too much by the intelligence agencies and military in such policies as continuing warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, in not prosecuting people at the top who broke the law in the previous administration, in not releasing the latest torture photos, in not pushing for gun control, in not yet completely leaving Iraq, and more recently, in not pushing for Medicare for everyone as the solution to health care reform. But in most other areas, he has been great and has returned our country to the status of an almost civilized country.
The Health Care controversy has once again made me have some doubt about the level of civilization in our country. Why on earth would anyone be against providing health care for everyone and stopping the predatory practices of the health insurance companies who now rule our medical lives? It can not be the shouted out argument that government should not run health care or even pay for it, since the popular Medicare program is government run and is very efficient and successful. Even those opposing health care reforms would not give up Medicare and also would not return those checks from Social Security they receive each month when they turn 65. So why is this occurring? The only reason I can think of is that this reform would hurt the profits of the giant health care insurance companies so they are paying huge sums of money to prevent this. This money is spent both in advertising to sway public opinion and in "campaign contributions" to the very members of Congress and the Senate who will have to vote on this type of bill. To connect the company money with opposition to reform implies that these politicians will be swayed (i.e. bribed) by the contributions to vote however the companies desire, but this unfortunately appears to be the case. There can be no other reason. And the politicians do not have to worry about health care since they are covered by a government financed program and will be covered their whole lives (I believe).
