Once upon a time, people got sick or injured and were treated by medical professionals who lived up to their Hippocratic Oath. They pledged to treat the infirmed, no matter what. What stopped this thousand+ year-old trend? Greed. Someone thought the “free market” would be better able to treat sick people than doctors.

When I was studying for my insurance license (Class 1: Health and Life) in Texas I learned an interesting fact. The first time that the majority of Americans had anything resembling medical insurance was during the 1940s. World War II had enlisted and commissioned the majority of the able-bodied men. This meant that they and their dependents were covered through the military service of a household member. After the war, these returning veterans and their families realized that they enjoyed the peace of mind that came with being able to go to the hospital without worrying about the financial burdens associated with it and so sought out insurance policies. They found the costs of these policies steep in many cases, and so formed or went to unions to get their employers to help pay these costs, and thus the benefits package was born.

The point of this trip down memory lane? As Americans, our first taste of health insurance was through government provided healthcare. It was so important to us, that when we no longer had access to this single-payer system, we went out and found the next-best thing. Therein lies the rub, because it was the next-best, not the best thing.

Over the years, the health insurance companies have found new ways to not pay for procedures they should be paying for, exclude health problems from coverage, and find new ways to drop clients from whom they have taken money from for years. Pharmaceutical companies (and food manufacturers) have paid enough into the campaign coffers of politicians that the FDAs regulatory powers (scant, even in their heyday) have been whittled down to a caricature of governance. Finally, hospitals have been privatized, instead of run by charities or counties and municipalities) and turn away people without insurance.

This brings us to our current crisis in healthcare reform. Rarely in American politics have we been privileged to witness such a nauseating spectacle.

Since our lives, all of our lives, are depending on the outcome of this issue, we need facts and reason in order to make informed decisions. What we are getting for the most part, however; is punditry and a huge amount of obfuscation, half truths, and out-and-out lies. Let's look at a few of the most grievous offenders being bandied about the airwaves:

Lie #1: People from countries which have a socialized healthcare system come to America to be treated.

Do people from other countries come to America for medical procedures? Absolutely. But that is the wrong question. The right question is do they come to the US for treatment that would be free in their own country? The answer is a fairly resounding “no.” Elective procedures aren't generally covered by insurance companies, much less government run systems. The people coming from England and Canada, etc. generally only come to the US for elective procedures, or for procedures that aren't available in their own countries. We have people doing the same thing in this country, so this really shouldn't be an issue, though those who stand to gain from the current system would love for you to believe that socialized healthcare is bad.

Lie #2: Socializing healthcare will make people leave the industry, stop entering the industry, and eventually cause a shortage of healthcare professionals.

This does not pass the burden of proof either because most of the career nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals trained to be such do their jobs because it is who they are. They are medical professionals because they really wouldn't want to be anything else. The ones who just do it for the money don't last treating patients.

The amount of money paid to the individual worker won't change much. How could this be true, you may ask? Think about it: there aren't many poor doctors anywhere in the world. Why? Because these people are the very definition of well-educated. They are in an industry that has a constant and unfailing demand. They won't be hurting, and the smaller healthcare businesses are likely to see better margins.

Lie #3: Socializing medicine will allow the government to euthanize us.

People actually believe this, and no, I'm not kidding. Members of the Right Wing Media Machine have alleged that the president's healthcare plan will allow the government to withhold treatment from people, especially senior citizens, essentially allowing them to die.

Instead of attempting to disprove a statement so...well stupid, let's pretend it is true—just for a moment. The question then becomes: how would it be any worse than the current system?

I know a lady in her early 70s. She was recently diagnosed with cancer which is spreading throughout her body. She had been in good health for her age and paid her premiums on time up until this, but her medicare supplement provider still dropped her. She and her husband can't afford to pay twenty percent of the thousands of dollars not covered by Medicare. Neither can they continue to pay for her medications now that they are in the Medicare D “gap.” Her doctors predict that without treatment, sometime in the next two months this woman, mother, grandmother, and wife, beloved by friends and family will die, because she got to old and too sick and some pencil pusher at her insurance company decided it would be cheaper just to let her go. Yes, she should sue, but if you don't have enough money to buy the medications you need to survive, you probably don't have the money to hire a lawyer. She certainly doesn't.

We've all heard stories like the one above. We've all known people caught and killed by similar circumstances. We've also read about people without insurance being turned away from hospitals—left to die without medical care. And if that's still not enough to make you realize that the current system causes people to die for profit, then think about the following words: Fin-phen, Gardasil, Vioxx, Oxycontin...I could keep going, but you should get the point by now.

Drug manufacturers, hospitals, and insurance companies are found to be liable for the deaths of Americans on a fairly regular basis. The question arises again: How would socializing medicine be any worse than the current system?

Lie #4: If we socialize medicine, the Government, not doctors, will determine what care is available, and who gets it.

This argument is ridiculous, and anyone swayed by it, is quite simply, not paying attention. The reason I say that is because doctors don't make those decisions under our current system, accountants and lawyers do. Accountants and lawyers that work for insurance companies and hospitals. Accountants and lawyers who are driven by the perceived threat of litigation and profit margins rather than treating patients.

The way government agencies work, for the most part, is this: Political appointees take responsibility for the term of whomever appointed them of organizations that they may or may not have any understanding of--in essence they defer to the judgment of their “underlings” who are career bureaucrats. These career bureaucrats oversee and approve the operations of specialists whom they generally defer to when it comes to the day to day running of whatever it is they regulate. These specialists I speak of would be doctors. If the government will cover a procedure, then the bureaucrats will pay for it. Why? Because the job of a bureaucrat is to spend their budget. The bureaucrats spend the budget, then they ask for more money based on projected needs for the next year.

A very simple overview of the current system involves the following: Doctors and other healthcare professionals perform the actual work. Their employers (hospitals, clinics, etc) have a level of bureaucracy which oversees them. The owners of the office, clinic, etc., are bound by what the health insurance companies and HMOs will pay and that determines which insurance policies they accept (i.e. which patients to treat) based on an assumed financial outcome. The health insurance companies and HMOs operate another level of bureaucracy to determine how much they need to inflate the cost of premiums in order to pay for those procedures and make a profit. If the hospital, clinic, insurance company, HMO, etc. is publicly traded, then each has another level of bureaucracy to make sure that the company inflates their profits enough so that they can compete against everyone from banks to oil companies in the stock market. And if all that wasn't enough to inflate the costs of healthcare, let's not forget the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries have to claim their thirty pieces of silver—each—as well.

If we were to further socialize the healthcare industry, the cost of healthcare would be lowered enough by eliminating bureaucracies and inflated profit from insuring people that we could easily afford to treat everyone, and for a lower cost to the nation as a whole.

Lie #5: We don't have socialized medicine in America.

When I wrote “further socializing medicine” above, it was not a typo. The largest insurance companies cannot and would not survive without Federal subsidies. Period. Humana, United Healthcare, and a host of others would die overnight. Why? Because the Senior market (65+) “pays the bills,” as long as they don't get too sick while the “underage market” (0-64) is almost pure profit (again, provided they don't get ill or injured). The pharmaceutical companies would also be bankrupted if they didn't get government subsidies in the form of research grants and Medicare/Medicaid. Finally, hospitals and many doctors rely on Medicare/Medicaid patients to pay their bills as well, because the elderly are more likely to need regular treatments.

Again, without state and Federal funding, the healthcare industry would collapse. Why prop up what we should take over, since we're paying their bills anyway?

Final point:

For those who would bring our founding fathers into the mix, assuming an opinion of men dead some 200 years (which is a little silly, but I like silly): just remember that in their Declaration of independence they claimed the duties of all governments to their people were to ensure the peoples' right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Can you live without medical care? Not well in most cases—not at all in some.

Can you enjoy your Liberty in poor health? The obvious answer is no.

Can you pursue happiness without health? Again, no.

If there was ever a thing the government should be responsible for, it is this one—especially since the free market does such a terrible job.