Healthcare - It's our life, it's our right...

It's no secret that healthcare costs are spiraling out of control in this country. On average, we now spend more per person on health care than both food and housing. Insurance premiums are multiplying much faster than inflation, which prevents economic growth and leaves businesses with less money to give raises or hire more workers. While the quality and availability of medical care in the United States remains among the best in the world, many wonder whether we'd be better off adopting a universal government-controlled health care system like the one used in Canada. It is unconscionable that in our rich country—the only industrialized nation without universal health coverage—millions, including children, are uninsured, and, senior citizens are often forced to agonize between paying for extremely costly medicine or food.

Health insecurity is not confined to one part of the population. It is experienced by all Americans. Those without insurance as well as those who risk losing coverage; those who are impoverished as well as those with higher incomes who experience catastrophic costs; those who are sick or injured as well as those who are just one sickness or injury away from financial calamity. As health care costs have skyrocketed and the proportion of Americans with stable benefits has eroded, health insecurity has become a shared American experience, felt by those who thought they had it made as well as those just struggling to get by.

I applaud Hillary Clinton for being the first person to propose universal healthcare - free healthcare for everyone. Unfortunately, she was defeated because of all the money involved. The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have many highly paid, former Congressmen, lobbying in Washington, DC to push the insurance and pharmaceutical company’s agenda. This makes it almost impossible for Congress to change our healthcare policies.The United States Congress will never change our healthcare system to offer universal healthcare. The only way our healthcare system will change is if Americans take to the streets in masses and protest and vote out every member of Congress who doesn't support universal healthcare. The United States government should benchmark the healthcare systems of Canada, France and England and develop our own universal healthcare system. It’s the right thing to do! Every American regardless of "anything" should have free healthcare. Every healthcare insurance company should be dismantled and every pharmaceutical company regulated by the government. It’s time for the United States government to take over our healthcare system and provide free healthcare for all!

I think it should be virtually free, as it is in most other countries past the state of semi-industrialization. It would be funded through taxes and through increased efficiencies in the system which other countries seem to be able to affect but which we seem incapable of accomplishing with profit making entities standing between the care providers and the patients. Until we put our feet down and say "we're not going to take it anymore", the mess will continue -- the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies will rake it in, while the poor and middle class will suffer (and in some cases, die) for lack of care. It's up to us.