Health Care Wars, Part IV: The Final Conflict. We Can Win.

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In this final part of the four-part interview with former Cigna health care VP Wendell Smith by Bill Moyers, Smith reveals several interesting techniques used by the private health care system. Of course, many people felt certain and many experienced the fact that health care companies frequently pruned their lists of less healthy members. But now Smith affirms it with the knowledge of an insider. He talks about the public health care system and the tactics that the united health care companies will use to try to destroy any health care legislation that has a public option. He knows and comments on the fact that public health care will be more efficient and therefor less costly.

Wendell Smith is one of those exceptional people who does what is right. If there were more like him, we would soon discover that what we are fighting for is a system like all those European countries and Canada who have a well-functioning system with excellent care and no anxiety. And what we are fighting against is our current system, controlled by a handful of very wealthy individuals, focused on profit at the expense of the American family. As if we did not already have enough anxiety from the system that they have burdened us with, they now create a whole host of false fears about costs, about service, about bureaucracy and about rationing.

We may find at the end of this difficult battle that we have a better health care system, but perhaps even more we may discover the power in the unity of the people to make changes for our own betterment in the face of great odds. The lobbyists are the favorites right now. But over three-fourths of the American people are in favor of an option, at least, to have the government to fall back on if the private system does not reform itself. If we can do this, we can do other things that overcome other lobbyists and soon perhaps corporations and Congress may look to the People rather than to the people with money on K-Street.