Yes, I know it may be hard to believe, but the World Health Organization’s report on health care systems rates the United States as number 37 – yes 37 – in the world. But those in the status quo want you to think otherwise, stating that we have “the best medical care in the world”. So who do you believe? And what really ARE the issues at stake?

Before we even get into the issue at hand, let’s take a light-hearted look at the issue by musician/actor/filmmaker Paul Hipp:

Humor can certainly bring light to the insanity of the situation. So now that we’ve taken a collective sigh of relief (and hopefully had a chuckle in the process), let’s now look at a couple of elemental issues in the health care reform debate.

It is critical to follow the money trail on this issue. There are a lot of “powers-that-be” that want to keep the system as it is – and rightfully so, if you look at it as a dollars and cents issue. Let’s face it – these powers are spending $1.4 million per day to maintain the status quo – via fear, via diatribe, via disruption of the true discussion. If your attention isn’t on the real issues, then it’s easy to maintain the status quo, isn’t it?

But it’s not just dollars and cents. It’s about human lives. And it’s the lives of our own, those that live within our borders, that are at stake.

There is one key issue that has not been addressed, one that is critical to health care reform. U.S. citizens have not had a problem with putting funding towards programs like public education. They have not had any problem with humanitarian efforts in third-world countries. But now, when faced with an issue as pervasive (morally, ethically, and financially) as health care in our own country, we need to look deep into our personal morality to decide if our society is better with some degree of universal health care.

Forget, for a moment, the issue of cost – and answer this practical question: do you, as a member of US society, feel that your neighbor, all of those around you, should have some level of affordable health care?

If the answer is yes, then we must throw away party politics, accept the data, and get down to work. And find a solution – not just more problems. We have plenty of good data, plenty of smart minds, and we can get this job done. That’s the American way.

If the answer is no, then we need not move any further. And if the answer to the “personal morality question of the day” is no, then our society needs to accept and be comfortable with the medico-social caste system that it has created, and be prepared for the social vitriol that will most certainly follow. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have some degree of health care for all. Plain and simple. So if this is the collective decision, we need to then stop being hypocritical about helping others and stop putting money into other countries for “humanitarian efforts” when we aren’t prepared to do so to support any level of “equality” in our own country.

By answering yes, we are not going down the road of socialism or capitalism. We will not lose our freedom – if anything, we may gain it. We can still have capitalism and competition and all of those things that we hold dear. We can learn from other systems and build from there. We can build something that is better than all the rest. But if we don’t have this difficult discussion with ourselves first, then the rest of the discussion is a moot point.