Government-Run Health Care NOW

Bill Moyers' Journal: Critical Condition

Please watch the above video.

The medical care system should be sealed off from the forces of the market; I believe that market forces should not be allowed to operate in the environment of health care. The reason is simple; if health care is run by for-profit companies, then those companies have to siphon off a portion of the money that is pumped into health care; otherwise, there is no profit. The only way to make money in health care is to keep a certain amount of each dollar that goes into health care costs (i.e., patients' bills)--say, one cent of every dollar (this is hypothetical). In other words, if you get an operation that costs $100 (this is still hypothetical), 99 of those dollars will return to the economy; the final dollar will be towards health care industry profits. Let's keep in mind that it is always in the company's interest (that is not a pun) to keep more of your money, since its only interest is profit--or, I'm sorry, "the interests of its shareholders," perhaps the mostly disgusting euphemism in popular usage.

If health care were (I'm going to say it) socialized, all of that money would return to the real health care system--the system of patients and their care providers, the system that does not include and has no need for insurance companies--and the system would work much more efficiently, albeit not perfectly. There would still be a gap between coverage received by the rich and poor alike, and so this gap could be lessened--with the idea of bringing it to nothing--by a progressive income tax, which would be relatively low for low earners and relatively high for high earners.