Government funding for the medical care of its citizens is a lofty but an expensive endeavor, but it will happen, not soon, but sometime in the future. Having said that, let me add that Americans aren’t ready for government funded health care because currently most Americans do not like to be taxed, and they abhor government regulations. Nevertheless, I believe that these two components would have to be the cornerstone of such a plan.

The need for government funded health care is obvious. In corporate America, where greed and power are abundant, and bottom line profits keep rising along with the corporate leaders’ salaries, there will continue to be a decline in the proportion employers pay for their employee’s health care coverage costs. But what are we finding when we research the results of the current rising health care costs and companies shifting more costs to its workers? Statistics show that families and their children are going without health care and are showing up more and more in hospital emergency rooms for care. Those patients can’t pay and the hospital recaps its lost revenue by ratcheting up their cost of services, which in turn increases the amounts billed to the insurance companies. So citizens who have health care and business that provide some part of their health care coverage end up paying for those that do not.

America has always been a land of ideas. Certainly at this stage of her life, she can be a front runner and come up with a plan that will provide medical care for her people. Most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public-that is, tax-supported-health care system. In recent debates on this issue there have been negatives inherent in those systems and the U.S. has of yet been able to come with a universal health care of its own.

America is only as good as the people who inhabit it. We all have to rise up to the problem before us and not sit on our haunches and let other people do the thinking and present ideas for us. Have you not known a friend or relative that is going through hardship because of lack of health care? As our population ages, it is inevitable that unless this problem is addressed, we will see our elderly not have the prescription drugs they need or proper attention to there health. How can we not raise loud our voices when we see little children that are too sick to go to school because their parents can’t afford to take them to the doctor or buy over-the-counter drugs? I’m not speaking about the population accessing the government funded Medicaid program. There are millions of citizens that fall through the cracks of coverage that are not eligible for Medicaid. What can we do to fill this gap?

We all need to come together and realize that the American Government is an institution that should protect and care for its citizens. A needed shift in its consciousness will need to take place before we can move forward to access that care. We will see hints of this shift when we see the present corporate greed and selfishness abate, and our eyes and hearts become open to the suffering that our present health care system inherently encourages.