A must read

After reading the Time magazine article Bitter Pill by Steven Brill I'm left more discouraged than ever.  I'm also a little angry that the American people have been so duped.  We aren't the sharpest tacks in the box at times.   In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.

Although nothing in the article was a huge surprise to me it wasn't a time when I celebrated the fact that I was right. Who wants to be right about the fact that health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.  Reading that  The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

I hope everyone will read this article.  It is well written and in words we can all understand.  I wish I could believe we could change this but I'm just not sure.