A National Scandal: Why is the U.S. the only industrialized nation that does not believe that health care for all is a national priority, or a right that will benefit the nation?

By Daniel Hines
Publisher
America's Seniors at www.TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com

The first week of May marks Cover the Uninsured Week.  It is a time that should cause all Americans to pause and reflect upon what passes for a 'national health care' policy and the impact it has on the well-being of our fellow citizens both individually as well as collectively.

In the vernacular of the streets, it is time to 'call out' those who continue to thwart the U.S. from moving into the 21st Century by joining other industrialized wealthy nations that offer total health care coverage for its citizens, rather than failing to address the total health care needs of the nation by providing universal single payer health care coverage for all citizens. Instead, our elected and appointed leadership continue to place the profits of large pharmaceutical manufacturers, insurance companies and others, and, too often their own political ambitions or greed,  ahead of the health of its citizens.

So, it is time to call out the people who are willing to sacrifice the health of Americans for their own personal ambitions, be they financial or political.

This includes Senate Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) for their refusal to allow the Senate and House to act upon the Holy Grail at which each otherwise worships, the 'up or down vote' by denying  a vote on providing Americans access to safe, affordable prescription medicines from pharmacies outside the U.S.

It includes FDA officials who claim that they cannot establish a system to 'guarantee' the safety of prescription medcines offered by licensed registered pharmacies from outside the U.S., while at the same time, that same FDA oversees manufacturing plants at exotic locations around the world, but still attempt to deceive the American public into believing that the prescriptions they purchase are American in origin.

It includes Homeland Security officials who seize legally prescribed prescription medicines that provide a vital lifeline for America's elderly and others who would be denied access to prescription drugs, claming that they (the officials)  are protecting America in the name of 'national security.'

It includes arrogant Medicare bureaucrats who, in the face of repeated calls for an extension of the Medicare Part D enrollment period, dismiss our elected officials saying that Congress, once having passed a law, can't change its mind. 

It includes Congressmen and Senators who failed to do their homework on Medicare Part D, apparently turning the homework over to staffers for whom the passage of legislation too often becomes more important than the purpose for which a bill was introduced in the first place.

It includes those same Congressmen and Senators (of both parties) who continue to accept huge donations from the profit-driven companies with bloated profits and smug CEOs who make millions of dollars while 45 million Americans face bankruptcy, financial distress or failing health that can lead to debilitating disease or death--a specter that extends even to our nation's children, who thus are joined with our elderly as the country's most vulnerable citizens.

It includes those Governors who have torn Medicaid asunder, placing the poor, many of our disabled, elderly and children to fend for themselves, and possibly suffer illness, shelter or care that otherwise would have been provided for them.  But, as our President, whose incompetence has made possible much of the malaise of this Administration,  said during the concerns about a lack of flu crisis, ‘stay well.’

It includes those who support a war that has cost trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, even more disabilities, and who claim to be protecting the best interests of America, but who also claim that it would 'bankrupt' us to take that same money towards providing jobs, health care insurance, and an infrastructure for the U.S. as part of a total strategic approach to improving the lives of all Americans.

It includes those businessmen who view governmental service as an opportunity to enrich themselves by enriching their companies, as the case of the head of the VA who, during his two-year stint, oversaw the awarding of $1.8 billion in contracts to his old company, which he later rejoined as CEO.  Or Congressman Billy Tauzin, who, after derailing a provision in Part D to allow the government to negotiate with  pharmaceutical manufacturers for lower prices in Part D, resigned his Congressional seat to take a $2 million a year job as CEO of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association in Washington. The list continues to grow and graft is so common-place among our elected officials and others that it almost seems to be sanctioned, at least until someone gets caught.

It includes so-called 'seniors' advocacy' groups such as the Seniors Coalition that sends an aging 'Grandma Green' across the nation on a beautiful John Madden-type bus to warn seniors of 'the dangers' of prescription drugs from pharmacies outside the U.S attempting to scare the daylights out of them with false claims about safety and efficacy, all the while claiming to represent those same seniors  whom she is misleading.

And, finally, it includes a President who suffers from a terrible disconnect with the needs of people outside his patrician crowd and partisan-staged journeys into the heartland of America.  What is needed is a return to the common-sense Republicans such as Eisenhower and Dirksen that once characterized their party.  What is needed is a return to the FDR-Harry Truman-type Democrats who had vision and integrity, or JFK, who saw that things could be better, rather than the policy wonks of the current Democratic staffs who not only have hardly connected outside the Beltway, but who also look with disdain upon those who want to help. 

A good place to start would be to apply a broad sweeping broom to those who feel that it is more important that America be an  imperial power, not unlike that of Rome, rather than a country in which government is the servant of the people, and that it is the job of government to do what is right.

It is time for us to send to Washington and to state legislatures and local offices, those who will believe that it is their duty to attempt to do the most good for the most people the most of the time within their ability to do so.

That would stop the train wreck that will occur unless some action is taken to provide all our citizens with a health care strategy to improve the well-being of a healthy public.