The Healthcare for Profit Industry is Dead

The healthcare for profit industry is dead.

The most important achievement of the affordable health care act is the fact that health care corporations can no longer refuse to treat a patient's medical problems because they are "pre-existing conditions". Healthcare corporations can also no longer refuse to insure potential clients because of pre-existing conditions, and they can not charge these people anymore than there standard rate.

These "rules" are moral and ethical in defensible.  These rules are analogous to an automobile insurance policy that refuses to repair automobile damage because doing so would be expensive and decrease their profit margins. These rules are also analogous to automotive insurance company refusing to ensure an individual because in the past they have had major damage to their cars in the past, even though these collisions were not there fault. For example, a drunk driver runs a red light and hits the potential clients car broadside, which in the automotive insurance business and law enforcement, is called "getting T-boned."

In my 35 years of practice as a primary care physician, I have seen hundreds of patients who cannot obtain definitive treatment because of these inhumane practices by the healthcare corporate system. It is agonizing to try to help these individuals who have diseases or injuries that we know how to treat, but because the insurance will not pay for pre-existing conditions and the patient is not wealthy enough to pay out of pocket. Two watch these individuals deteriorate, when I know effective treatments are available is agonizing. I must stand by, in a helpless manner unable to fulfill my Hippocratic oath because of corporate greed. It is a source of national shame that we have allowed these disgusting and destructive corporate rules to cause so much unnecessary suffering for such a prolonged period of time.

Thanks to our sitting president, Barrack Obama, these nefarious practices are finished.  Eliminating the pre-existing condition rules, also will over time end the healthcare delivery for profit system. The healthcare industry has been making easy money, about 30% annually for at least the last three decades. In the corporate world a virtually guaranteed 30% annual return is phenomenal. And when one considers that the annual income of the healthcare for-profit industry totals $1.67 trillion.  So it should come as no surprise that these corporations run entirely for profit, and not a glimmer of humanitarian concern for the people that they ensure, are doing everything they can to sabotage the AHA. Meanwhile they are throwing a rampage of rage through the mechanism of the electronic media, which they and other superrich individuals and corporations control. These attacks have no ethical boundaries, and include fabricated personal attacks on the president and everyone who supported what they call "catastrophic socialism". Translation, there access to the easy and enormous profits in the healthcare industry has been taken away, and the Tea Party and most of the GOP are acting like spoiled brat teenagers who have just lost an important game, and are complaining about everything: the refereeing, the field conditions, claims of cheating by the opposing team, and on and on. We have all heard it. What we don't hear are congratulations to the other team, or any admission that they were simply outplayed.

This major defeat combined with the sharp division in the views of opposing groups, politics in America has become even uglier, and we can expect it to remain so for an extended period of time. Not since the period of time preceding the Civil War have Americans been so divided. The most basic issue, which has plagued our species sense we socially organized beyond the tribal state, is the rich and the poor, those so deprived nutritionally and uneducated that they are  uninformed and lacking in the ability to think critically. Sadly, many of the more vociferous anti-Obama and anti-Constitution advocates do not realize that they are targeted to be "wage slaves" by the superrich who are trying to dismiss our Constitution, and convert this country and all others, into aristocracies with the superrich as the Kings and Queens.

This victory gives great hope for this country.  It proves the party in control of Congress and most of government, and backed by the superrich can be defeated on major issues.  These issues like universal access to health care boosts the shrinking middle class which has been targeted for extinction by the super rich. It gives great hope that other major American institutions like public education, can also be revived from it’s current pathetic state.

Morris Creedon-McVean, D.O.

Austin, Texas

December 20, 2013