The Practical Paraplegic

By Sofiea Clerico

If you take a step back and look at the situation the U.S.A. finds itself in — you find a country going over the cliff because of obscenely profitable health insurance corporations. At the present rate, U. S. families are looking at health insurance premiums double those it pays today in just 10 years! How do employers run their businesses if employees have no health insurance? If  many are sick, or are worried sick about loved ones with no insurance?

Disabled people suffer much, much higher unemployment rates than others. Thus, in another way we will suffer out-of-proportion if a sensible health care plan is not okayed soon.  Who knows how much easier it would be to find a job if health care was not an issue? If  our health care came from one-payer or public option?

Families fall victim to insurance rates, then employers, then the entire country.

When every wealthy, industrialized country in the Western world can afford to give each and every citizen health insurance — how is it the U. S. cannot?

Senator Max Baucus, (D) Montana put out his version of a health bill? today. From all reports it is a serious embarrassment to the country.

Read The Loneliness of Max Baucus (Salon on-line) where you find these words, “Many Democrats were even harsher. “We can do better,” said Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who was cut out of the negotiations even though he’s on the Finance Committee. Russ Feingold, of Wisconsin, called it “healthcare reform in name only.” Another Finance Democrat, John Kerry, told me as he ducked into an elevator that “I just think there’s some issues with the substance.”