I admit that I (along with tens of millions of other Americans) have a big stake in the issue of health care reform. When the Rocky folded, I lost not only my income, I also lost my health insurance, 80% of which had been paid for by the company. Yes, I took COBRA, which is underwritten by the federal government for nine months, after which I’m responsible for the full amount. So the first thing that happens after losing my job is that my expenses go up by about $15,000 a year. Is is just me, or is there something very wrong with this system? 

And that’s just the first part. Approximately sixteen months from now, if we don’t get major health care reform in the interim, my wife and I will have almost no chance of finding affordable private insurance, thanks to pre-existing conditions. Believe me, we are not alone in this. The statistics are frightening. Each year more than 20,000 Americans die from treatable illnesses because they don’t have health insurance and either wait too long to seek medical care or are refused service by providers. Almost two million Americans go bankrupt each year because of medical bills, and one and a half million lose their homes. According to a Reuters study, 62% of all bankruptcies in this country are as a result of medical costs. 

We remain the only wealthy country in the world without universal health care. In almost every other industrialized country, a medical bankruptcy would be a national scandal. Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan have figured it out. All of them cover all of their citizens, at a cost well below ours, and all of them have better health outcomes by every measurable standard. Their people live longer, healthier lives, have a lower infant mortality rate, and pay far less than we do for far better care.

Yet the folks who make the most money from our shockingly incompetent health care system are gearing up one more time to fight any reform that will hit them in the pocketbook, aided and abetted by political allies in Washington. How any politician representing any district in this country can support the status quo is beyond me, but there is a reflexive disdain for change among a large group of our representatives, all of whom have the best health insurance available. American health insurers make billions from a system that denies coverage to the people who need it the most, and spend a lot of that money building up the campaign war chests of their Washington allies, not to mention funding misleading advertising campaigns to talk the public out of the reform we most desperately need. I don’t know if the despicable Harry and Louise ads will run again this time. They were devastatingly effective in derailing the Clinton administration’s attempt at reform. Something like them is surely being filmed as I write this.

I know the ads I’d make if I were in charge. This cartoon would be one of them.