Health Care....Again!

I was talking with my son-in-law Bob at breakfast this morning about health care and health care reform. He made a pretty good point I think. He said that as long as health care was a business, there would be no meaningful health care reform. In fact, he believes that there will be no real health care in America at all.

Health care providers, the Doctors, and Hospitals, as well as the Insurance companies and pharmaceuticals require patients, or sick people. There is no incentive to cure the ill. Sick people are needed to make money. No sick people, no money coming in, it is that simple. He believes that the profit motive must be removed from health care in America.

He may be right...It seems as if family practitioners are getting harder to find, because there is more money in specializing? That has to be one reason. Why would a drug company develop a drug that actually cured a disease? From the kindness of their hearts? Doubtful...corporations do not have hearts. If a drug cured a disease, it would not be needed once the patient was well, then no more profit or even income from that patient. It would seem then that curing a disease would not be in the 'best interests' of the drug companies. If doctors cured illnesses rather than just bringing relief from the symptoms, they too could run out of patients. Well maybe not, because people are really good at getting themselves into harmful situations. But possibly oncologists could run out of cancer patients if a cure should be found. My mother's oncologist thought the cure for cancer was no more than 5 years away, in 1963! Think about that for a moment. It is nearly 2010, and a close friend died Friday from cancer. Could it be that the cure for cancer is not what is being researched or at least not being researched aggressively? Well, could it? We can know for a fact that cancer is still among us, as are diabetes, heart disease and whole list of other nasty illnesses.

I have heard that the insurance companies have spent 500 million dollars lobbying to defeat health care reform in America. I am checking on the veracity of that statement. I will let you know what I find out. But I believe it is logical to assume that some of our insurance premiums are being spent to defeat health care reform. The insurance companies are not going to be in favor of anything that might lower their 'bottom line'. It is not logical to think otherwise. Remember that money to fight health care reform came from the insureds' premiums.

I believe Bob has a point. His point might raise more questions than it answers. I believe that in order to solve a problem, the correct question must be asked. Perhaps that question is, Who has the most reasons for people to get and keep healthy, the health care industry or the people receiving health care?