Are you people focused or business focused?

I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR last fall that has stuck with me - well, at least a part of if has. The host (Neal Conan) had several medical doctors on the show to talk about what a national health care program would look like - how it could possibly work and how other countries handle their own health care. Of course countries like France, England and Canada come up with Belgium being the favored by the panel.

A caller commented during this session about how these nations prioritize national health care and why - and he made an interesting point about the overall focus of the nations in question - including the US - it seemed to him that western countries that put a high priority on national health care programs were people focused and those that didn't were business focused.

The panel unanimously agreed.

I have always wondered why it was such a crazy thought to have a national health care program. It's a fundamentally reasonable and logical conclusion that as the world's leader in wealth and technology that we should easily have a health care program in place for all of our citizens. And to look overseas at European nations that have robust programs - and I wonder why could the Belgians or the French do this, and we can't?

America is an amazing place. We have the oldest government in existence - older than any other modern forms of national governments. Nations have looked towards America and have modeled their own democratic policies and governance upon our model. And we are a nation of nobodies who have collectively turned towards our own Bill of Rights and Constitution to allow us the basic frame work of all laws in our lands. The foundational structures that let everyone have a shot at making the American Dream their own. And nearly all Americans have been able to do such.

Where we differ is that with our capitalist economic structure and personal property rights, we have let that bleed into areas that we should have protected for all to use. We have pulled together as a nation to protect the most beautiful areas of our country into national parks for all to see, we have amazing institutions that are house our national treasures and knowledge that are free and accessed by all. We even created free public schools for all of our citizens and free attorneys if you require one for a criminal case. But we dropped the ball big time on this one.

There is too much money at stake for a radical shift in national health care. Billions of dollars trade hands from companies that make their profits from the health care industry. Anyone from for profit insurance companies to drug manufacturers. People will pay whatever it takes when their mortality (or pain) is on the line.

I have always marveled at the cost of medication. Take for instance epileptic medication - it costs $16/day or an average of $480/mo or $5,760/yr. Say it cost the manufacturer for the initial R&D around $1 Billion to develop the drug and then another $100 million per year to supply it. According to the Epilepsy foundation, there are approximately 3 million people in America that are suffering from epilepsy - that's $17.3 billion in revenue each year.

Let's take this over a 10 year window (epileptics have to take this the rest of their lives, by the way) - The cost to the manufacturer was $1 billion with an additional $1 billion in expense over a 10 year window. Total outlay $2 billion. Gross revenues from the sale of the drug are $173 billion over a 10 year window - that's a net profit of $171 billion dollars. And that's just the people suffering with epilepsy and nor does that take into consideration their other expenses for health care, doctors visits, emergency care for seizures, etc.

You tell me, at what point is it price gouging when a company makes 8,550% return on investment off of a captive audience? I'll tell you it's great for the shareholders! That is until they really think about it and know that they are robbing the poor and afflicted blind. Greed has to be kept in check. A monopoly of service is created when a captive audience has only one alternative. We didn't let it happen with the phone company - but I guess it's OK if you've got epilepsy.

Our nation needs a gut check about what we need to provide to our citizens as basic and decent human beings and stop this nonsensical behavior that inflates the real cost of the health care in America - and maybe this is the perfect time to introduce it with the banks failing from their own greed and self love. The people are outraged as it is and sometimes anger can be a great rallying cry.

In my mind, to do this shift would be a radical departure from our current infrastructure thinking - we would have to refocus our core values from being business focused to being people focused. That good things don't trickle down from the top when we reward the wealthy for being wealthy and that how a nation treats it's poor and afflicted is a really a true measure of it's own character. And that takes a gut check on what we believe in ourselves. Are we a nation of individuals who claw and stab one another to get ahead or are we one that unites and works together so that everyone has a chance? I would like to believe the latter, but I know that we're firmly gripped in the former.

But it all starts with one.