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THE FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE: IT'S IN YOUR HANDS

© Pat Mahan

As we approach the dawn of the new millennium, health care in the United States is in the greatest crisis of my professional career. You've quite likely seen or heard the advertisements flooding the media talking about this crisis. Did you know in the last 18 months nearly every major long-term care facility in the United States has filed bankruptcy? Did you know thousands of hospitals are loosing money daily and hundreds are at risk of having to close their doors.

What's the problem? Primarily it's the new Medicare Prospective Payment System. In one fell swoop this new payment system removed over six billion dollars in payments to health care providers. What's worse, it impacts the services that are offered to patients in need of care. While this writer would not disagree the Medicare system was in need of overhaul, the system currently in use may remove millions of beds, from our society's most vulnerable population.

Just last month, the fifth largest long-term care company in the U.S. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This company cares for more than 1,000,000 people over the age of 65 every day. Who's going to take up the slack? Facilities are closing at a time when we're going to need more beds then ever.

What can you do? VOTE!!!. I cannot stress enough the importance of your involvement in this years political races. Time and space to not permit sharing every politicians stand, and doing so would put me at risk of endorsing certain candidates. Something I would never presume to use this forum to do. I do invite you to use the discussion forum here at Suite101 to talk about your state and national issues. It's easy to do and a great way for you to share with the members of your community. It is critically important that you investigate the stand of local and national candidates. What is their plan to help correct the system? How do they propose to fund the health care system? Who's going to be covered? Learn all that you can, then show up at the polling booths. With a little over two months to go, time is running out.

Get the facts, take a stand, campaign for your choice and then...we must hold our candidates to their promises. We'll talk about this more after the elections. The only thing broken with the political system in the U.S. is our own citizenships lack of involvement. Let's take back what is our...a government "of the people, by the people and for the people.". You will not find anything about special interests in our constitution and while they may fund lots of TV, print and radio commercials, they cannot vote.

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