Health Care Reform

It was the strangest thing, but I was just walking along, minding my own business, when I fell off the edge of the internet! Thus explains my extended hiatus from blogging: it's taken me awhile to claw my way back up to my keyboard. I'm still a little tired from the effort, so my first foray back into blogging is borrowed.

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a letter to the editor written by my father, a wise man indeed. I am reprinting it here. Without further ado...

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Health Care Reform
How history will judge us

Soon Congress will pass a watered-down version of a health care bill that falls far short of what most governments see as routine and responsible.

Historians of the future will look back on this time and wonder why Uncle Sam could not manage to provide easily accessible health care to his citizens. They will wonder at our unwillingness, unlike every other industrialized nation of the 2000s, to offer government-provided medicine to those unable to afford private plans. "What were they thinking?" historians will ask.

Here's the answer: We are thinking that profit margins for health care and pharmaceutical corporations are more important than treating and preventing disease and treating injuries for our citizens. Perhaps someday the priorities of this nation will improve, but for the present, our intentions are clear.

Signed,
MY DAD

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