I'm not sure what you mean by "health care" and I'm
not sure where you get the 50 million number. That
said, virtually everyone in the US can get subsidized
health care if he/she is poor enough. A case in point
is a coworker of mine that got a $250,000 bone marrow
transplant at Stanford hospital for a couple thousand
dollars.

The last figures I heard for uninsured was between 44 and 49 million people
and it's been going up since Bush became president. Poverty in general is up
at least a million this year alone. But that's 50 million in round numbers.
It also doesn't take into consideration all the people that are
underinsured. Those are the people who find out when a health care problem
happens that they get almost nothing covered by their insurance companies or
HMOs.


That
alone out to make a dent in your thick skull that something is wrong
when
the richest country in the world doesn't have a good enough system for
all
it's people to get health care without going bankrupt. You of all people
should see the flaws in this system. But then you have to have two good
eyes
to see and you obviously are impaired. In more ways than one.

Well, there is a big problem, but it's not that we're
unwilling to spend the money. The US spends more
per-capita for healthcare than any other nation. The
trick is to make it work well for those who can afford
it and make it work tolerable well for those who can't.

You are correct. The U.S. spends more than any other industrialized nation
for health care yet can't cover everyone. That just shows how poor we're
doing. If I remember correctly we spend close to 13% of our dollars on
health care. In Europe and Canada it's under 6%. It's obvious that the way
we're doing it works very poorly. Except for the companies in the health
care delivery business.


Medical care is one of those issues that absolutely
cannot please both the free-enterprise crowd and the
social-equity crowd. Throw the profit-hungry drug
and medical profession into it and it's a guaranteed
mess.

You are right there. We just have to face the fact that the private
enterprise system for delivering health care to 300 million Americans won't
work. I think it's safe to say that we have tried it and it has not worked.
If we were not such a crooked and corrupt country we would look at what
every other country is doing, see what works and what doesn't, and create a
new system that does at the minimum a good job of caring for everyone. We
could do it but it's a matter of overcoming special interests, which is why
nothing has changed for so long. Those with the gold make the rules and they
like things the way they are. After we go broke then we'll do what I am
recommending, but not before.

Hawke