Holiday Wishes And A Healthy New Year!

Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanza and Happy Chanukah! Let’s hope next year is a better one for the entire world. My personal holiday wish is that all Americans will have affordable health care in the coming new year. It’s not as big a wish as world peace, and that’s always on my list, but it is something I think the new Congress could and should take up.

I have to say that I am ashamed that our prosperous and remarkable country is one of the only industrialized nations in the world that has no national health care system. Why can a country with as many political and economic problems as Mexico have a state run health system and we have none? Why, according to the Center for American Progress, do 45 million Americans lack health insurance today. millions more are struggling to pay premiums that are growing five times faster than wages, even as their benefits shrink.

What does this say about us as Americans? Having had a period of my life when I had no health insurance and little money to pay for health care I can tell you. It means you get sick and you suffer and with luck you get well on your own. If you get seriously sick, you end up in the county emergency room and you hope that the medication they prescribe is cheap enough that you can afford it. It means that if you do not have enough money for experimental treatments for rare diseases, you just suffer or die.

It all comes down to money. The rich get the medicine and health care they need and the poor get the leftovers and sometimes nothing at all. I can tell you from experience, I lived in fear of getting sick. A day sick meant a day without the ability to work and that meant falling further and further in debt.

Today, I am grateful that that has changed. I have expensive health insurance, but it covers most of what might happen. There is no excuse that millions of Americans should live in constant fear of getting sick through no fault of their own. It is a shame on our national identity. We must demand that the new Congress do something about it.

Here's an interesting plan that the Center for American Progress has proposed. There are others equally as novel and the point is it must be discussed and something MUST be done.