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Just about everyone knows what's wrong with the U.S. Healthcare system, but no one wants to really do something about it: It's full of fraud, waste, and pumped-up profit margins. The current system promotes dependence on prescription medicines to a far greater extent than, for example, it promotes education about how to stay healthy without them (or avoid the necessity to use them in the first place). There's way too much money being made (both legally and illegally) off people getting sick.

As the recent bail-outs have shown, we've become a nation of "quick-fixes." Now Congress is thinking about throwing a trillion dollars at the healthcare crisis in order to, allegedly, reform healthcare and provide more coverage for more people.

If Americans have learned anything from the recent bailouts, it should be that the trillion dollars that Congress might throw at the healthcare problem will not get to mainstream America for their care in any manner that resembles an efficient process. Substantial amounts of money will be siphoned off (and/or converted to more profits) by the "powers-to-be" in the healthcare industry as it has been for many, many years; just like the banks were the prime recipients of the bailout funds allocated to resolve the mortgage crisis (while hundreds of thousands of homeowners were still, and are still, getting foreclosed on to the delight of those who make wind-fall profits off the foreclosure frenzy).

So....

What do you think is the primary reason for the delay in the current healthcare reform efforts by Congress?

Hopefully, the delay is being caused by concerns about the delivery of cost-effective, efficient, quality healthcare - and not by a fight over how much money is going to be siphoned off to or by who.

Seems odd that we haven't heard much from Nancy-Ann DeParle, the Obama-appointed "health policy czar." Maybe this is why (as reported by Fred Schulte of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, American University on July 2, 2009):

"Since leaving her government job running Medicare for the Clinton administration, DeParle built a lucrative private-sector career. Records show she earned more than $6.6 million since early 2001, according to a tally by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Much of that corporate career was built at companies that have frequently had to defend themselves against federal investigations. After leaving government, DeParle accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director.

Now she’s back in government as a leading voice in deciding the shape of health care reform. Named by Obama in March as director of the White House Office of Health Reform, making $158,000 a year, DeParle is the point person in pushing for the administration's plans for changing health care and the ways Americans pay for it - changes in which her former companies have a great deal at stake.

Critics see DeParle’s re-emergence as a classic case of Washington 'revolving door' syndrome, despite Obama’s suggestions that he would shut that door."

So do I.

- Ed Smith, Publisher
The EHS Letter Manual