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Health Care and 9/11
We are coming up on the annivarsary of the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks. Sure as clockwork, people with an agenda will make speeches.
Here's my agenda: I love my country. And a country is only as strong as its people are healthy. It's really that simple. We are pouring billions of dollars into insurance companies for-profit hands. We are pouring billions of dollars into doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals. We are the UNhealthiest industrialized population on the earth.
As a small business owner, I am particularly involved in the need for national responsibility for the health of the citizenry. In a recent article in Business Week (not anyone's idea of a hotbed of radical sentiments), small companies reported a national pattern of insurance companies dropping coverage for the entire company if one of the employees gets seriously ill and files a claim. In a small company, ONE heart attack, ONE case of cancer and the entire company has to drop coverage or go under. How does the sick person get well, with that load of guilt to live with? How does a conscientious [meaning, among other things, having a conscience] HR director or small biz owner (like me) focus on making money when the threat of no health care coverage looms every day?
Do you have good company paid insurance? Good for you. You deserve it. You won't lose it. Now start caring about the rest of us. Because that's what all those patriotic words are all about - that we are one big family and we are all in this together. If you are not willing to care about the whole country, then you are like teh spouse who likes to be married in the good times - when your spouse brings home the bacon and the health care benefits - and splits when s/he loses the job and the bennies. And we have a word for people like that.
Another Business Week stat says that 87% of the people who don't start small businesses cite lack of health insurance as the reason they forced themselves to go looking for a job. Fear of that heart attack or cancer forcing their family into utter ruin and bankruptcy [65% of the total are for health care bills] keeps them from starting the business that could thrive and create more jobs. In addition to the immediate drag on the economy from poor health, we also have to realize that lack of health insurance coverage keeps people stuck in poor-paying jobs when they could be happier and more prosperous in business. And that hurts all of us.
This Patriot Day, let's all BE patriots and support health care reform with a public option.