Opinion

Obamacare fight not about our health

Posted September 27, 2013 4:40 am

Those seek to defend the current United States public health system by crippling the implementation of Obamacare should tell us what it is about the current system they are defending, and why.

The current system has over the past two decades: cost the U.S., per person, between 50 and 100 percent more than the public health systems of the other advanced countries in this world, given us a higher infant mortality than the other countries, and given us a shorter life expectancy than these other countries.

So what is to defend? I believe that what is being defended is excess profits from a health care market that is not a competitive market. Unlike deciding whether to buy a new TV, American consumers cannot sensibly forego health care entirely or decide to take half the medication dosages or half the tests prescribed by their physicians, in order to balance their budgets.

Those of us who are not physicians are not intellectually equipped to understand the risks involved in such decisions, and we have been raised to trust our doctors and hospitals to make these decisions.

The people pumping big dollars onto the fight against Obamacare are not motivated by our health, they are motivated by their own opportunities for wealth. Tea Party people of the world, I believe you are being played for chumps. Wake up and stop paying the piper.

Alfred Y. Kirkland Jr.

Elgin

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