On "Obamacare."

If the "Free Marketeers" had their way, we'd have the kind of situation that prevailed under the notorious Sulla in ancient Rome. That very sullen Roman set up a fire brigade of his own, a private venture. When a tenement caught fire, his minions would race to the scene. Then heated (pun intended) negotiations would ensue - under conditions of obvious duress - with the building's owner. A price would be agreed upon for services rendered, usually resulting in Sulla's taking possession of the property. That is, if the negotiations were carried out to completion before the building burned to the ground. With our present system of "Socialized" urban fire-fighting, this approach is not permitted. I think that's for the best. Don't most of you, even the "Free Market" fanatics among you, agree?

Suffice to say that if the precious private-enterprise system were the appropriate means of providing affordable, effective, high-quality health insurance to the majority of the people, we wouldn't have more than 45 million uninsured Americans in the first place! Corporate health insurance cartels have had half a century and more to prove they can do the job; they have failed miserably. Thousands have died waiting in vain for the life-or-death assistance the Humanas and Blue Crosses too often fail to provide. In fact, the Institute of Medicine reports that lack of health insurance causes approximately 18,000 avoidable deaths every year in the United States. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the overall outcome for health care in this nation ranks 37th world-wide, just behind Costa Rica. Costa Rica, a poor country which happens to have government-run health care!

In Britain, home to the much maligned National Health Service (NHS) the average British Subject lives three years longer than the average American Citizen! Companies like United Health Care have made untold billions while sending out letter after letter denying coverage based on "pre-existing conditions." The prohibition of this kind of corporate-imposed death penalty by these venal and greedy companies is just one reason that passage of the dreaded "Obamacare" is, by and large, a good thing. Fact is, under the "Free Market's" stewardship, a majority of all personal bankruptcies in the United States today result directly from unpaid medical bills; yet another reason to rejoice over the beginning of the end of corporate insurance's stranglehold.