I spent the first 25 years of my life a beneficiary of that system. It is a single-payer system. Nowadays they have the TriCare insurance program for dependents and retirees who can’t go to a military facility for whatever reason, but that money still comes from Uncle Sam.

Why does no one discuss this? It’s important. I happened to run across a post at the Heritage Foundation website that stated that as of 2007, the military health care budget was less than one-fifth of the entire D.O.D. budget for that year. Isn’t that impressive? That’s better than Medicare and Medicaid put together in the regular federal budget. I think they’re around one-fifth or a little bit higher and they don’t even cover everyone in the United States.

I’m tired of everybody trying to re-invent the wheel. I don’t need an insurance company and I never did need one. I view health care as being a civil defense and national defense function just like the police and the firefighters and the military. We don’t hire insurance companies to pay for those. We don’t need them for medicine either.

At the same time, we are the government’s bosses. If we were to have a single-payer program then it should pay for visits, tests, and procedures but the government should NOT have input into how citizens use it. The government doesn’t punish us for calling the police when we hear a noise outside at night. It doesn’t punish us for calling the fire department when Junior gets his head stuck in the staircase banister even though they are not responding to a fire. And nobody has yet punished a politician for sending our troops off to combat under false pretenses or for purposes other than our national defense–which has happened several times now, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

So all I want is to be able to go to the doctor for yearly checkups, get labs when I think something’s amiss, get surgery if I need it, etc., without going bankrupt for half my adult life. And I really don’t care if the insurance company employees lose their jobs. At least they’d have health coverage and some breathing room to get retrained into another industry. As of now, I have no such luxury. I’m not a bad person and I don’t deserve to die of an untreated condition.

So John Mackey can stick it where the sun don’t shine. Because that’s what he’s saying–that we deserve to keep struggling and dying because we’re not cool like he is. It’s not like he even cares about what he’s doing. I read an interview with him once where he said, paraphrased, that his stores only carry organics because they’re the big In thing right now and if it didn’t make financial sense to carry them anymore, he wouldn’t. Ben and Jerry cared more about the public good than this joker does and the stuff they peddled wasn’t even good for anybody. That’s sad.

My issue with Mackey and Weil and why I don’t agree is that they don’t seem to want ANY reform unless it’s the full reform they are talking about. We have enough push back against a “public option” which is optional for people to buy into and most people would buy into it but for those without any insurance or any way to afford it, it would be government subsidized. So many of these people are marginalized through no fault of their own. They need help and can’t get access to it. This includes important laboratory tests like blood sugar levels.

As a healthcare provider, what I see is that more people are interested in listening to the alternatives I can offer them (including dietary ideas) if their life depends upon it. Sad but true. If these people have no way of knowing that the reason they feel horrible is that their blood sugar is skyrocketing, they won’t get help unless they end up in an emergency room, thereby costing us more.

I feel that Mackey and Weil are clouding the issue that we have before us now and that is so many Americans have NO ACCESS TO ANY KIND of healthcare.

I am curious: Madashelldoctors.com has a wonderful video. They are for single payer (and actually have a link that shows cost effectiveness either on their site or an outside site they link to does it). However, as doctors they talk about the issues of working under Big Pharma and Big Insurance. As you have stated before that you are against the public option (right now I’m for it because we need something–I’ve worked in public health. It’s overwhelming to be at the level that I am–technically only a technician and having to try and deal with people who are so sick they needed major medical intervention years ago) but I’m wondering if we were talking about the kind of reforms that they were talking about (far more radical than a public option and because it’s single payer in theory there would be less choice) but because they want to reform the whole system does it become more palatable? In others words, are we in disagreement because I am too radical (the usual case) or because I am settling?
.-= Bonnie´s last blog ..My Plan: Heal my Spleen Energy with Lacto Fermented Foods =-.