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By J. Zel Lurie
 DELRAY BEACH, Florida—“That was a fantastic speech,” said my wife at the conclusion of President Obama’s hard-hitting address to Congress on health reform.
Those were the same words I used fifteen years ago to describe President Bill Clinton’s speech to Congress on the same subject.. He presented a complex plan drafted by his wife, Hillary. which would cover the Americans then without health insurance. The number without insurance is now 25 percent higher.
Hillary had been assured by a letter from the American Medical Association that they would support her plan. Instead they devastated it by a series of false Harry and Louise TV ads.
The AMA hasn’t changed. The doctors are continuing to sponsor outrageous lies in TV ads. President Obama fought back. For the first time in a presidential address he used the word lies.
It did no good. The lies in the TV ads were broadcast all night following the president’s address.
But this time the President will get a health reform bill of sorts. Representative Charles Bousteny Jr. of Louisiana, a heart surgeon who gave the Republican response, laid down the teems of a “common sense bipartisan plan.”
The Republicans will agree that no person will be denied coverage because of preexisting symptoms. But nothing was said about sky high premiums. Also the companies will not cancel insurance when the person becomes ill.
In exchange the President must drop the competition of public insurance. Representative Boutany repeated the Republican lie that the public option, which is the heart of health reform, would raise the cost. It’s obvious to me that competition will reduce and not raise insurance premiums.
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The President said that he would consider alternatives to the public option. He is ready to compromise so that he can get on to the serious problems facing him in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
The president said that every president since Theodore Roosevelt had advocated universal health care without success. The President vowed to do better. “I am not the first President to take up this cause,” he said, “but I am determined to be the last.”
He won’t be the last. Heath costs will rise. Doctors fees will continue to go up . Waste and management will continue to take one-third of health expenditures.
The next President will once again come to Congress asking for health reform.
The solution is to take the profits out of health care. We are the only country in which health care is a a big profitable industry. It is 17 percent of our gross national product.
President Obama included his address with a letter Ted Kennedy wrote him to be delivered after his death. Senator Kennedy wrote that health care “was above all a moral issue.” It is not just a moral issue. Basic health care is a human right like education.
Basic health care should be provided to everyone including illegal immigrants like basic education..
Just as urban Jews pay their education tax while sending their children to private schools, so everyone will pay a health tax to provide care for everyone. Those that can afford it will pay for private doctors and clinics.
President Obama has rejected this solution which is commonly called the single payer plan. It prevails in various forms in every other civilized country.
That’s too bad.
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