Medicine is under siege in the US.
1)Over 40 million Americans do not have Health Insurance.
2)The number of uninsured is growing.
3)The costs of health care are increasing at 6.7% faster than rate of inflation.
4)Healthcare costs are 15% of GDP in 2007 and are expected to be almost 20% by 2017.
5)There is an overweight, under-exercised, disease prone young generation arriving with very early chronic diseases.
6)But most important of all, Doctors, under the current Managed Care Systems, are simply wearing out.
Now you tell me if a)Health will not be an ever percolating and boilover issue in the next few election.
Oh and if John McCain has 5 minutes of time, could he explain why the Bush/McCain tax cuts which have failed to “trickle down” to the economy to mitigate or prevent the current downturn caused by the greedy rapacity of the major investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms among others (stalwart members of the top 6% of earners in the US) should be renewed ? These same privileged 6% of the US population will garner most of the Bush/McCain tax breaks.
Now Republicans and Patricians will say the later statement smacks of class warfare – having engaged in that very same warfare for the past 25 years by stealthily cooking the tax and earning books to their advantage. In the meantime they have been downsizing and taking away from the other 80-94% of wage earners such that income inequality in the US has reached its highest level over the past 50 years – so they should know all about class warfare.
Geez, I would like to have just a fifth of that 30% of all income to 6% of wage earners, trickle down the Open Source way.