Healthcare

Healthy citizens make good citizens. Healthy citizens are able to work, to shop, to be active in their communities. It makes sense that we would want our citizens to be healthy. It makes sense that we want to take care of our children. Unfortunately there are way too many problems with the healthcare system we have because healthcare is not affordable for a vast majority of people. If it were affordable it wouldn't be an issue. The government is spending trillions of dollars in this department.

Unfortunately, all of the options on the table seem to skirt around one of the biggest healthcare expenses we have. The healthcare of illegal immigrants. Texas and California are hit particularly hard by this expense. The Department of Health and Human Services should have the numbers on approximately how much our government spends on the healthcare of people who shouldn't be here. Now, I'm not saying that if someone who is in this country illegally has a heart attack he shouldn't be rushed to the hospital. All lives have value. However, if an illegal alien seeks medical treatment they can't pay for, they should be deported. It's nothing personal. It's a matter of economic survival. We're not only spending money we don't have, we're allowing other people to help us do it!

In these tough economic times we have to take care of our people. We're out of work. We are losing our homes. We have neither the time nor the resources to keep playing footsie with our borders. We will never get the cost of healthcare to come down if we don't get a handle on illegal immigration.

We have to stop sending illegal immigrants mixed messages. We tell them we don't want them to come here illegally and then we take care of them when they get sick, educate their children and give them food stamps. I know there are those that say if we don't give illegal aliens healthcare they can't pay for, then when they get sick they won't seek medical care and that will promote the spread of disease, however, they do have televisions. We could give them fair warning that we're going to stop. Some of them might actually leave of their own free will. People who want to come here specifically for medical treatment can get visas to do that.

It is the philosophy of this blog that while bailouts and stimulus packages are all well and good they completely miss the mark. We need a stimulus/bailout package for our government, not our auto makers. Businesses will come and go. They always have. Hopefully our government will not.

It is our government that needs more people to fill more positions and more money to pay and insure them. It's not about bigger government. I have no idea why anyone would want a bigger government. We don't have enough people working in the positions we've already created. If we did the FDA would be doing a better job inspecting food and drugs. If the FDA had enough people to do their job properly we wouldn't have so many recalls from things that make people sick!

You can complain all you want, but if a company is only running on half the necessary amount of people to get their job done well, then it stands to reason they won't do a good job. Yet we expect no less from our government. And they're bailing everybody out but themselves. Which means the American people are bailing out everyone but themselves. There's very little point in passing new laws or creating new programs when we can't handle the ones we already have.

Healthcare is not a new issue. Immigration is not a new issue. Governement bailouts aren't even a new issue. Anybody remember Lee Iacocca? If we keep arguing partisan politics and policy, history has proven that we will get very little done.

When you think of "We The People, " think of us collectively as a home builder. That's what we are supposed to be doing, building our home. America is our home. President Obama is our new architect. We hire a new architect every few years. But we are the ones paying to build this house. It needs to be built according to our specifications. A lot of people seem to think the house has already been finished and is badly in need of repair, but I'm not sure that's true.

I think our founding fathers laid a strong and sturdy foundation. Our industrious citizens of the past left us their framework. And in the 60's we dropped the ball. That's when we needed to stop and fix the government we already had and we didn't. So yes, those of us that were here in the 60's shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for our country's current problems. We have no excuse. To fix our healthcare problems, we have to fix everything else or we'll just be putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

Illegal drug abuse and alcoholism contribute to our governments healthcare expenses too, not just illegal immigrants. If anyone thinks we're winning the war on drugs, they're not watching. What do drug overdoses and rehab cost our government? I'm not saying rehab should not exist. In a perfect world, it wouldn't be needed. I am simply pointing out that lower healthcare costs long term can only be achieved by increasing spending in other needed areas. We can't lower health care costs today. The best we can do today is get help to those who need it now and start taking steps to insure we won't need to spend as much in the future.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could take the money we're spending on healthcare for people who shouldn't be here and put that money into our Veterans healthcare expenses. They have medical facilities that are as badly in need of repair as some of our schools. Oops, here's another job alert!

We have work to do. We're just not getting the jobs done.


Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato

This content may not be copied or reproduced in any way without the express written permission of the author. You are welcome to link to or bookmark this page, but please contact the author via E-Mail if you wish to reproduce this article in whole or in part.