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"People who say they don't have time to take care of themselves will soon discover they're spending all their time being sick."

-- Patricia Alexander, Book of Comforts

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"Universal health care is affordable coverage which is extended to all eligible residents of a governmental region. These programs vary widely in their structure and funding mechanisms, particularly the degree to which they are publicly funded. Typically, most health care costs are met by the population via compulsory health insurance or taxation, or a combination of both. The US is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care. according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and others. Universal health care is provided in most countries, in many developing countries, and is the trend world wide.

"Countries with universal health care include: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom."

-Universal Health Care, Wikipedia

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I will not tell you that I can even begin to understand the health care system in this country. It is so complicated and bogged down that I doubt I could sort it out. What I do know is that everywhere but here, public health care is funded by taxation, private parties and insurance. That money goes directly back into the health care system. Here, health care is funded by unregulated insurance companies and corporations. We pay these private parties a monthly fee to cover us should we need health care, or even a check-up. If we happen to need this service we pay thousands of dollars for, we are penalized with rate hikes, or dropped all together.

I believe all (or the majority) US insurance companies work this way.

I have not formally studied business, but is this not a poor business practice? You charge a client a regular fee for a service they may or may not need, but if said client then needs this service they've been paying you for, you either deny their claim, raise their rates or drop them as clients - this is after said client has paid you thousands of dollars.

This kind of reprehensible practice is not only legal, here in the US, it is required by law in many instances and many states! This is, by the very definition, extortion.

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One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small... and the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all. Remember, what the door mouse said; "Keep... your... head!" ---Jefferson Airplane

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Preventative medicine is just starting to gain popularity in America. Traditionally, doctors and nurses are trained to treat an ailment, not prevent it. But, like I said, this is changing, slowly.

Most Americans, myself included, have learned to take care of their own health care needs, through fitness, healthy eating, education, etc., either because of a lack of money for health care or a lack of trust of the practices. Necessity has brought us to this point. Many of us learn preventative practices and lifestyles because we know if we get sick, our health care -if received at all before it reaches severe points- will be minimal, the bare necessities. That which is paid for by state or private insurance companies.

As a nation, our general health leaves much to be desired. I believe we are the fattest and sickest industrialized nation in the world. Obesity leads to a host of other diseases. That is a fact. The U.S. lives on pills (prescribed for everything from lack of attention to chronic heartburn to erections), which many of us get from Canada and other countries because the cost here is astronomical, because our medical problems - either through lack of funding or lack of knowledge - are not properly dealt with and cured once and for all, but rather the symptoms are treated with medications, typically over our lifetimes.

The FDA is assigned the responsibility of testing and approving medications before they go on the market to assure that they are safe for us to ingest. Yet the plethora of pills being advertised on television have numerous horrendous, and even deadly, side-affects. Yet, they are approved none-the-less!

Why?

Whom is benefiting from these dangerous, band-aid-like, medications?

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A couple of the common arguments opposed to universal health care go as follows:

• Health care is not a right. As such, it is not the responsibility of the government to provide health care.
• Universal health care would result in increased wait times, which could result in unnecessary deaths.

"Increased wait times"? Do you mean more than eight hours or more in the waiting room? And what about the "unnecessary deaths" of all those dying from treatable, preventable diseases and sicknesses because they have no health care?

In the name of equal time, here are a couple of the arguments for universal health care:

• Health care is a basic human right or entitlement.
• Ensuring the health of all citizens benefits a nation economically.

If this country did have a respectable, universal health care system in place, one which practiced preventative medicine as fervently as it does treating injuries and existing diseases, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries would lose a large chunk of their target audience, and a large chunk of their very fat bottom line...

So, you tell me: Is it because of the reprehensible insurance and pharmaceutical corporations that we have such an ineffectual health care system? Or is it because of the ineffectual health care system that we have such reprehensible insurance and pharmaceutical corporations?

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I fully expect there to be plenty of arguments and statements against universal health care in the comments of this hub, and I welcome them. Please, convince me, if you can, how assuring the health and fitness of all of a nations population will not benefit that nation.

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Although not an article about universal healthcare, Shannon Brownlee (author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer) wrote an eye-opening piece for AARP Magazine titled Why Does Healthchar Cost So Much? that is a recommended read.

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