TERRY MOSHER
As if our health care system isn’t broke enough, now the Doctor’s Clinic is being swallowed by the giant CHI Franciscan Health and creating less options for less expensive care.
Bigger is not always better. In fact, as giant health care systems become bigger and bigger, costs continue to skyrocket as the risk of monopoly rises. As great as our country is we rank first among the top 13 highest developed countries in terms of cost.
As of 2013 and before the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) was enacted, the United States cost per Gross National Product was 17.1 percent. That was nearly six percent higher than the next country – France – and almost 10 percent higher than the United Kingdom (Great Britain), which ranked last among the top 13.
Personal care becomes less personal and more corporate as big corporations like CHI Franciscan gorge on small entities. I have experienced that personally in my interactions with my primary medical group that also was acquired by a larger corporation in 2015. Costs increased and care became less personal as corporate rules and regulations were imposed on doctors.
My heart specialists were also swallowed whole within the last two years and I almost immediately felt the effects of corporate structure instead of the great personal care and relationship that I had received before the so-called merger.
So don’t tell me that bigger is better. It may be for those who have a stake or share in the company, but it is not always better for the guy who needs care and has no stake in the business.
I wish I had an answer to our continuing health care problem in this country. As long as politicians try to divide us and that division is part of the government, as it is today, then the solution to health care will never be solved.
Part of the anger in the country that has given rise to a strongman – Trump – is there because the middle class, what is left of it, and the poor feel they are being dumped on while the top one-percent, as Bernie Sanders says, continue to get richer.
If we continue to allow big money to run our country and allow extremists to be elected, we will be doomed because at some point a class war will erupt. Maybe it will not happen in my lifetime – my expiration date nears – but it will happen.
This election in November is extremely important. This is the most important presidential election in my lifetime. If we allow the Madman (Trump) to get elected, heaven help us. Health care and the extreme cost of it will be secondary to the destruction that will follow his inauguration.
We need at this point – two months before the election – to decide if we want to continue electing tea party extremists that will rip apart the constitution, destroy women’s rights, and isolate us from the global economy or fight back and take back our country so that all people of all skin color, of all nationalities, of all religions, of all sexual orientation can live with honor safely and with equal opportunity to earn a living wage. That isn’t so now, and will disappear almost entirely if more extremists are elected.
It’s not too late to stop Trump. It’s not too late to stop the extremists. It’s not too late to get big-money out of our government, out of our elections. It’s not too late to stop Russia from interfering.
But we must get out and stand up for what is right and just. Your vote counts. Not voting is not an option. And vote the bums out, and keep the strongman from ruining our country.
Enough. The YMCA beckons. I need to get in better shape so I can fight harder for the people among us who don’t have justice and fight against the people who will take away the justice we do have.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.