Health care reform should focus on health, not profit

Our current health care system is making me sick, and sadly my Aetna plan doesn't cover CDS: Corporate Disgust Syndrome. As a community, whether local, state or national, there are many services that we all will need. Police protection, fire departments and education are services we want all people to have, regardless of income, race or gender. So we socialized these services. We all pitch in through tax dollars to have these services available to everyone at all times. There was a time in American history where fire departments were not a socialized service. If your house were on fire, you would call a fire company and negotiate the rates as your house burned down. The situation would get worse as your house fire spread to other houses. That's where we are now with health care. Prices are so high that the majority of our population can't afford insurance. We spread our sickness to others instead of taking a sick day. America needs a public option that will provide affordable and comprehensive health care to every single American.

The myths that health care reform is only going to help the poorest of the poor, or hamper the wealthy, are attempts by insurance companies to divide the common people and cloud what is in their best interests. Thousands of freshly graduated UConn students saw their health insurance disappear as a reward for graduation this spring. For those who are covered, costs of care can far exceed the provided insurance coverage, leaving them with mountains of debt for an emergency room visit. According to June 2009's Business Weekly: "Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers." This makes the No. 1 cause of personal financial meltdown in our country our health care system.

While regular people are declaring bankruptcy at a record pace, health insurance companies are reaping huge profits. According to Fortune 500 magazine, Aetna, the company that provides health care to UConn students, made a $1.7 billion profit in 2007. Even worse was United Health Group, which earned a whopping $4 billion in profit. In order to make a profit, insurance companies are denying patients essential medical services.

To claim, as multiple writers have, that a national health care plan will force the poor insurance salesman or the high-end surgeon into abject poverty is to put the concerns of the wealthiest one percent of Americans above our national well-being. This is as close to the definition of selfishness as you can get. These folks will all find plenty of work at very comfortable salaries. Insurance salesmen have all the corrupt financial skills that any corporation would love to have.

More importantly, any doctor practicing for the money rather than the well-being of their patients needs to switch professions. The thought that my doctor sees dollar signs when he thinks of possible treatments is pretty disturbing. I do not want my next emergency room doctor to come to me with a menu of which body parts I can afford to save. Yes, this has actually already happened.

But the bottom line comes down to whether or not we, as a country, want to privatize everything. It seems hypocritical for students who are attending Connecticut's top public education option to condemn offering the same style of access for health care. Because of public schools, a much higher percentage of our country is able to move up the social ladder through public higher education.

We have already agreed that services such as roads, water sanitation and national defense would not make sense as exclusively private industries because the well-being of our families and our country would be in the hands of corporate executives. We have seen, over and over, corporations sacrificing the common person for a little extra in their bonuses. Health care is no different. We need a system that helps people stay healthy before they get sick, removes any profit motivation or greed from treatment decisions and, in times of emergency and weakness, has our well-being as its only mission.