Death Panel

When Sarah Palin recently coined this term “Death Panel” as a comment to the provisioning of the funding of doctor’s and other providers for end of life assistance in the Obama’s new health care reform plan;; her words resonated across the country.

While in true sense there is no Death Panel in the health care reform plan, however, I would be surprised if Sarah Palin would lose the opportunity on keeping the lead foot on this. There is a reason why “Death Panel” resonated from East to West and North to South in US. There are many amongst us who within us don’t support the idea of medical insurance for all. Consider for a moment; a hiker getting rescued from a treacherous part of a steep climb in an uninhabited mountain. Who pays the bill for the rescue? It is us, the tax payer. Why? Shouldn’t the hiker who took more risk should be made to pay for his / her rescue?

There is a similar feeling against the new Obama’s Health Care Reform Plan as well. People who have insurance may feel that people who don’t have insurance are getting their medical coverage at the cost of insured Americans. Why should the insured continue to pay for the uninsured persons? Capitalistic society as we have in US feel very strongly about why an uninsured person who goes to ER needs to be funded by the tax payers and that’s the genesis of the heated debate that we are seeing across the town hall meetings in the country.

But the problem is out of approx 48 million uninsured Americans there are many who actually had the health insurance but because of the economic conditions resulting in job losses etc lost their health benefits as well. The capitalist mind is not willing to pay for the people who they think have lost or not capable of getting the health insurance as their problems and not the problems of people who are keeping their benefits.

According to me there should be a simple solution. Health Insurance should be made affordable and accessible to everyone. Those who don’t opt for it should do at their own risk and be fully accountable for it. Even if they come to an ER almost dying, tough luck dude! You chose to opt out of the system. So for those who opts out of the system should wear a clean underwear and stash cash just in case they meet with accident

This system can not only protect the fibre of capitalism but it will also ensure the best of socialism (in offering the opportunity to everyone to take the health care benefits )to co-exist in a dignified manner Socialism can also co-exist in US.