Whitehouse, Reed and the Community Dinner

I went to the Community dinner at the Johnston Senior Center hosted by Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed about health care reform. This is the second community dinner put on by Whitehouse that I have been to. The last one was in February in Warwick. The subject then was healthcare as well. How this dialogue is fueled by our prejudices was aptly illustrated by two people who said basically the same thing and how the crowd reacted. In February, an American with a small business spoke about the rising costs of providing health care to his employees. He spoke of how the State of RI has allowed BCBS a 12 percent increase and how the rising health care cost were destroying our ability to be competitive on a world market and how he can no longer afford to provide health care to his employees. The point was made and well taken by the crowd. Last night a man spoke who was originally from Germany. He spoke with a heavy accent. He related how he had been in business in Germany for 25 years and in business in the United States for 25 years. He made the same points as our American friend from the February meeting, about costs and competitiveness. He also dared to make the claim that Germany’s health care system was better than ours, particularly in Cancer treatment and research, citing the Hollywood types, (Farah Fawcett) who can afford and do go to Germany for treatment. People expressed outrage, cries of “Why don’t you go back to Germany.” And “How dare you, my ancestors fought for the freedoms you enjoy.” Same subject, same issues within that subject and same conclusion but a markedly different reaction. Americans need to get their heads out of their asses. The World Health Organization ranks the world’s health systems. France is number one and Italy is number two. Germany is 25th while the United States sits at 37. Costa Rica is 36. Think of it, Costa Rica has beaten us in the health care game. The Organization also ranks life expectancy. Here in the United States the average life expectancy is 70 years, we are ranked at 24. Japan is number one with a life expectancy of 74.5. And Germany, they are at 22 with a life expectancy of 70.4. What a lot of people fail to realize is that a lot of this rhetoric about health care is driven by insurance and drug companies. Two health insurance companies control 80 percent of the market. Insurance is supposed to spread the risk around, insure vast numbers of people and the healthy pay for the sick. What has happened is that the insurance companies only insure the healthy and as a result reap huge profits. Now, I do believe that business has a right to a fair profit, but they do not have the right to gouge the American people. We don’t need Franklyn Roosevelt, the President who pushed through Social Security; we need Teddy Roosevelt, the progressive trust buster.