WHAT'S IN YOUR POCKET?

IGNORING COSTS

Americans are being bamboozled into health care reform. Why? They don't know the difference between MEDICINE AND SURGERY -- which is what health care really is -- and the social/economic issues that bedevil the delivery and distribution of care in America.

How bamboozled?

This graphic, provided in today's New York Times demonstrates just how detached the American public is from their health care. They are detached because they don't pay for it--they hardly share in the cost of it.

Since 1965 the personal and out-of-pocket spending by the American consumer has remained flat, while total national health care spending has gone up more than 400%.

Without direct involvement in cost decisions and implications, Americans have become as detached as trust fund babies from the realities of just what is being purchased and its relative value.

Americans have also been dumbed down to the point where overhaul of the system can be enacted under the ruse of a crisis.

Americans need a chance to choose for themselves whether they want their PHYSICIANS, their MEDICINE and their SURGERY to get thrown out with the dirty bathwater of cost, insurance provision and service distribution.