Congress has a disability that good health-care could help

It's been said by Senator Wyden and others that Congress has the best healthcare available. So we have to ask the good senator and most of the other members of Congress: 'Shouldn't you get yourselves some quality hearing aids with that great insurance of yours?' There's no other (polite) way to explain their universal deafness to the public out cry for a national single payer health system, or at the least a robust national public option that could lead us to single payer.

A review of national and regional polls for more than a year have shown public support to be between 59-73% for a national single payer system. In New Hampshire, 65% of all physicians and 81% of primary care physicians supported single payer. In Minnesota, 64% of physicians were in favor of single payer. No national poll in recent months has been less than 59% in favor of a national, universal, single payer health care system. An election victory with numbers like these would be called a landslide, a pubic mandate. So what gives? How can Senator Max Baucus, (D), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and by the way, a committee on which Senator Wyden sits – say single payer is “off the table”?

Maybe they don't want to be distracted by pesky polls which can be manipulated, but which they rely so heavily on when it suits their agendas. Maybe they don't want to be “unfair” to the health-industrial-complex – champions of the great free marketplace where “competition” has given the American consumer the most expensive – double anybody else's – health care costs in the world, but 37th in results. Or maybe, because we're Americans and the greatest people on earth, they don't feel they need to ask the experts in every other first world industrialized nation how on earth they do it. A Canadian cancer, a French fracture, a Spanish spleen, or an Australian appendix just can't be like our American Health Problems (patent pending)... Or maybe it's just the friends they keep. Baucus' health industry and bigPharma friends have given him more than $1.2 million this year and more than $3 million since 2003. That's $5.79 for each and every registered voter in the state of Montana. He's getting the most, being the guy who can say with authority that single payer won't be considered by the Senate, but he's certainly not the only one filling his campaign coffers with money from your health insurance premium dollars: In total, $5.4 million has been given to federal legislators this year alone.

Whatever the reason for Congress' collective deafness, one thing is for certain,they will not be deterred. You can be sure they will fashion a health care reform bill that will cost even more than what we're already paying as a nation. It will be one that no one will understand and no one will like, but it will be one that is "uniquely American" – hearing aids not included.
Wayne Baum