Health Care Reform - What Reform

Bill Moyer's article says what I have been thinking lately.

Health care reform to help Americans take care of themselves is somewhere between sick and dying. Health care reform to assure profits for the Medical Industrial Complex appears to be alive and well, although some members of the industry have been so pampered by generations of pliant regulation that they refuse even to go along with the scam non-reform that appears to be what the administration might call compromise.

Per usual, Paul Krugman is willing to share some facts, along with his opinions. Everybody else is just flinging poo.

At some point,We The People have to answer this question:

Does health care exist primarily to generate dependable profits for the Medical Industrial Complex, or to care for the health of We The People?

While we're at it,we might ask a more general question about institutions in our society,both private and public:

Do social institutions (Government,corporate and community) exist primarily to assist We The People in our pursuit of Life,Liberty and Happiness, do We The People exist to assure that social institutions are successful in meeting their goals, of Profit and/or Growth?

Another area where this question should be asked, but isn't (with the exception of crackpot Conservatives), is in bailout Nation. Is it really in We The People's Interests to shore up a bunch of private enterprises? The bank situation is too complex to figure out, but the auto industry is a little easier to fathom. Chrysler filed a plan with The Federal Government to keep operating with about 59,000 jobs in the U.S. To date,the Government has dumped about $8.34 Billion into Chrysler. That works out to about $14o,000 per job (Warning - I didn't do a lot of checking here). Perhaps that money would have been better spent directly supporting the affected families, rather than indirectly supporting 59,000 of We The People by temporarily propping up an enterprise that admittedly can't exist without a lot of taxpayer - provided largess.

I don't know whether supporting autoworkers families directly, or through propping up their employers is the best thing to do, but what I do known is that that question has not even been asked, because those in power believe We The People must support the institutions. Tote That barge, Lift That Bale!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.