Before President Obama delivers his State of the Union address this evening, we hope that he listened to the reasons why Massachusetts and the American people rejected his verson of healthcare.  Normal Americans were locked out of the back rooms and forced to sit passively on the sidelines with their hands tied while the teams they elected were fighting in the playoffs.  One team was severely handicapped by not being able to field an equal number of players.  Then, everything changed when the game venue got moved to Massachusetts, where the voters took over play.  They were disgusted with not having a say in any of the 2,000 pages of the bill commonly referred to as Obamacare.  Staffers and lobbyists crafted this bill in dense legalease.  Our lawmakers did not even read it.  And, when Joe Sixpack and Jane Hockeymom tried to download a draft, they maxed out their printer's ink and computer's memory on the file size.  How could you vote on something that you have not read nor understand?
 
Little need to worry, because, unless the House of Representatives signs off on the Senate version of healthcare reform and passes it without changes to the President, Obamacare is DOA.  If the House proposes changes to the bill, it would be passed back to the Senate after newly elected Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts is seated, as he promised to be the 41st vote in opposition which would prevent this bill from passing.  And resurrecting any healthcare bill bi-partisanly this year is highly unlikely in the current electrified, partisan atmosphere as we head towards House and Senate elections in November 2010.
 
The biggest farce in our society is believing that happiness or health can be achieved in one gargantuan, curative pill via a single Federal Healthcare Bill.  It is onerous.  It failed in 1994 and failed again.  The answer to reform starts with microchanges to the system that we already have.  Rework it facet by facet, like polishing a rough diamond meticulously according to formula, to bring out the overall radiance for the greater value of the whole gemstone.  Do not just swoop in to polish it overall, resulting in a shiny, round rock of little worth. 
   
As of now, there has been no true HEALTHcare bill in Washington, not just because this one has been hidden behind closed doors and carved out in backroom deals, but rather because it had nothing to do with HEALTHcare, just INSURANCEcare and BigPharmaCare.  It doesn't address the fundamental underlying diseases in our healthcare system with appropriate treatment.  While America has some of the finest techniques, education and talent in medical care available, it also has a sickly system of healthcare operating around it.  The American patient needs to be freed from insurance company directives by bean counters who maximize profits for their leadership and shareholders by withholding care.  A rational system of coverage needs to be instituted.  Americans fundamentally understand that reforming our healthcare system is a necessity, just not via current methodology. 
 
It is a disgrace that America, our beautiful, is unable to take care of its own people any more as is exemplified by the number of uninsured who do not have the means to have healthcare insurance coverage, nor can they afford to purchase healthcare services on their own.  America's healthcare system broke down when it became a business instead of an effective system of allocating healthcare.  It is unthinkable in most other first and second world countries for citizens not to have the dignity of access to healthcare.  But, disguising a boondoggle for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries as providing healthcare to all Americans is a deception of great proportion that the American people saw through.  This Obamacare bill was a mere transfer of wealth vis a vis new mandatory insurance premiums from private citizens, employers and state & federal governments to insurance and drug companies.  Forcing people to be insured does is not equal to providing healthcare.  In fact, the insurance industry is one of the most costly, gargantuan problems requiring reform in the American healthcare system as it is.  They fund classrooms and endow professorships in medical schools ensuring their survival and indoctrination from moment one by affecting curriculi and brainwash our newest physicians into thinking that only pills are medicine.  No wonder American medicine has become one big drugstore.  To feed that monkey steroids via Obamacare would have been to create an unimaginable government mandated and protected oligopoly.  The most poignant moment of our failed state of healthcare did not happen in Massachusetts, nor will it happen on the House floor, it happened when healthcare became Big Business.

Instead of implementing healthcare bills that significantly benefit big business and certain senators in buying their votes, America needs to enact healthcare reform that benefits patients.  We need to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or charging individuals higher premiums for those conditions, otherwise sick people cannot afford to be insured.  That is why the pooled risk concept of insurance was founded.  Right now, insurers just want to skim the lushious cream of the healthy, collect the premiums, and pay out little for care. Out of pocket expenses need to be capped at a reasonable level in all policies to reduce the indignity of bankruptcy due to illness.  This level needs to be particulary low for those with permanent disabilities as it drives them to bankruptcy and is an inordinate impediment to return to work.  We need to make sensible decisions about end of life care.  CEO pay, executive pay, and administrative expenses need to be minimized in the insurance industry.  Provide a public option to compete with insurance.  The public option and death squads were fear mongering by lobbyists who did not like the idea of needing to compete with the government via pricing of healthcare as it would have driven down their profits.  Insurance companies lobbied hard against the public option, so it will certainly be good for taxpayers.  In fact, huge numbers of Americans are already insured under public options:  the military, Federal Government employees, Medicare recipients, and Medicaid recipients. 
  
Healthcare reform obviously was not achieved by shoving one big jagged pill for Lobbyists' happiness down the American people's throats.  We are all still choking on the TARP, auto industry, housing, AIG, and other jagged little bailout pills pushed on us.  These have proven to benefit only those industries and their shareholders, thus far & left us with a bad housing portfolio and unimaginable national debt.  America has yet to come out cured.  Americans are tired of paying for bailouts with their empty pockets while those who caused systemic problems are counting out their bonuses with no consequences.  It is time that Congressmen sat down to work in the sandbox together to fix components of the current healthcare system as a consolation prize for the American people.

Kimberly Wilcox is currently freelance writing about financial politics, as well as Healthcare policy, specifically, Chemical Injury and its medical & lifestyle consequences.  She is a lifestyle coach to others with chemical injury, chronic fatigue, autism, Gulf War Syndrome & Fibromyalgia, as well as to professional athletes desiring peak performance without use of illegal PED's.  She is an expert on Green Living and her new book will soon be published about the Green Life that she has been forced to live for the last decade.