By PLS
I’m reading that Congressional Democrats, sensing victory ahead, are “drafting an ambitious health care agenda.” Even assuming they gain control of Congress, it won’t be easy to put such an agenda into effect. President Bush, hitherto so enamored of hiding behind signing statements, is likely to develop a late-blooming taste for vetoes
Meanwhile, the Dems are very much on the right track:
More than 45 million Americans are uninsured.
Once upon a time sick or injured Americans would pay thousands to to be flown out of India rather than be admitted to an Indian hospital. Now they fly to India for surgery. The surgeons are deft, the hospitals are up to sanitary snuff and the cost is super right. Ex-patients can afford a look at the Taj Mahal and Varanasi before heading home.
And many more Americans are going to Mexico for dental care—to Ciudad Juarez, for example, as I reported last year. In fact, there have been more hits on Whirledview’s “Dentistas Galore” than any other post, except “Indian Love Poems.” Unfortunately we haven’t counted all the hits, because at first we didn’t realize what was happening, but it’s clear that the cost of dental care in the US is very worrisome to a lot of Americans. The Democrats need to do something about dental insurance, too.
And now a personal note. It was hard, getting all those messages and not being able to give out the names of specific Mexican dentists. I can report that there are dozens of dentists in Juarez. I can observe that many Americans are going there for dental procedures. I can relate that those I personally know of are satisfied. But there’s no way that Whirledview can recommend the services of any one dental practitioner.
What I hoped to do with “Dentistas” was to alert the powers-that-be to the unhappy fact that many Americans can't afford dental care at home, with the result that they are flocking to the border towns in Mexico. I wanted Congress to do something. Maybe the Dems will.
Meanwhile, although there are interests and ideologues resistant to creating a cost-effective, universal health care system for Americans, our more hard-hearted representatives might start counting up all the highly skilled jobs that are already being exported—surgeons, dentists, other health care workers, the whole range of positions involved in hospital care and laboratory work. In the near future the hemorrhage of jobs and skills could add up to a large percentage of another industry lost to globalization. (And I haven’t even mentioned web-based xray diagnosis.)