I don’t know if you have been following the health care debate but Bush’s last statement regarding the accessibility of health care really stunned me. He has proven once again that big business and corporate profits trump the good of the public. He was quoted on The American Prospect as saying “The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America, after all, you just go to an emergency room.” Bush’s ignorant stand on health care and his dismissive remark reminds me of the arrogant and cynical comment widely attributed to Marie-Antoinette…”Let them eat cake.” As with Marie-Antoinette, is there no end to Bush’s callous disregard for humanity? When it comes to policy issues, he again shows his hand as being loyal only to profit and in health care that can possibly spell the end of someone’s life.

If you look under the covers as Michael Moore did in his recent documentary called Sicko, you will find that profit is the primary incentive in health care and making a profit is contingent on “medical losses” in which they measure their success in terms of a medical-cost ratio. How would you like to find yourself with terminal cancer or heart disease and have your claim reviewed in the light of it being a “medical loss” in which the insurers’ sole intent is to limit the medical-cost ratio? According to Physicians for a National Health Program, medical-cost ratios have been continuing to improve due to tightening of reimbursement over the years. Here is what they had to say about medical-cost ratios.

The medical-cost ratio — also called the medical-loss ratio or medical-care ratio — is the key number for health plans in terms of their level of profitability. That ratio, simply, is the percentage of dollars the companies spend on health care, including physician reimbursement.

Whereas 10 years ago many plans had medical-cost ratios in the high 80s or 90s, now the highest percentage among large, publicly traded health insurers is Health Net, at 83.9%. Aetna, which had a medical-cost ratio well into the 90s when CEO John Rowe, MD, took over in 2000, recorded a ratio of 76.9% in 2005, Dr. Rowe’s final full year before his retirement. That was the lowest medical-cost ratio for the nation’s largest publicly traded plans.

So what does this mean? It means that insurers are paying fewer and fewer claims. And, that means more people either suffer with their ailments or they eventually succumb to it when their claim is “denied coverage” due to its impact on the bottom line. How does that sound as a compassionate, world-class health care system? Why is it that the American public is forced to deal with a private health care system that sees dollars as more important than people? If Bush had his way, he wouldn’t have any governmental interference in the health care system at all. He was quoted recently on AlterNet.org as saying…

I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it’s wrong and I think it’s a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress’s attempt … to federalize medicine.

And, to prove his point Bush is threatening a veto of legislation to reauthorize the highly successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). His objection is that he does not favor a ‘massive expansion’ of government health insurance. Although the sad truth of the matter according to FirstFocus.net, is that the current proposal would only insure one-quarter of the 8 to 9 million uninsured children in America today. The current program is experiencing a shortfall of $14 billion over five years since his original proposal did not even approach the amount necessary to reach any of the millions of American children who are uninsured. In fact, the President’s budget proposal would result in over 1 million children currently enrolled to lose coverage.

So what’s your position on the health care debate? When the U.S. is ranked 37th which is just above Cuba in the “Rankings of Countries by Health Care System” by the World Health Organization, it’s time we take an honest look at where we are. How is it that the U.S. with its mega-wealth and super-power status has such a dismal record on health care?

With nearly 47 million Americans or 16 percent of the population without health insurance, we need to push our presidential candidates for answers. This has become the only way that we can even begin to see any change in our private health care system that siphons wealth from ordinary citizens into the pockets of big-money drug companies and health care insurers. And, with Bush in power, the only thing we can be assured of in our health care system is that this siphoning of wealth will only continue. I encourage everyone to learn all you can about the health care debate and know what is at stake. We need to join all the other industrialized countries in the world and establish a humane and fair health care system that doesn’t put dollars ahead of people.