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company, to whom they paid their hard-earned premiums, delayed or denied their care. The crowning blow is the deplorable treatment received by the brave men and women who worked month after month at 9/11 Ground Zero now suffering severe respiratory ailments and being kicked around like footballs to determine what insurance company, if any, is responsible for paying for their care.

Americans already pay for world-class healthcare; we just don't receive it. Why? SICKO suggests the answer may be as simple as, we are paying the wrong people for our healthcare. Whether employer-based or privately purchased, our healthcare dollars all go first to middlemen, i.e. for-profit, insurance companies who are not providers of care, whose sole motivation is making money for their shareholders, and whose profits are maximized only when they do not spend our healthcare dollars (premiums) for our healthcare. The current system is like paying all our electricity money to the phone company with the expectation the phone company will pay our light bill. We will be sitting around in the dark, but the phone company's profits and revenues will soar as long as we keep paying, and they continue keeping us in the dark.

What if the old-fashioned approach, only the elderly among us remember, was better? What if individuals and their loved ones, in consult with the physicians of their choice, make the best healthcare decisions? What if individuals, not their employers or their government, choose their own insurance plans based on a competitive marketplace where patients and physicians rate their experience with the various insurers?

Untangling the American healthcare system requires soul-searching on the part of us all. SICKO demonstrates our healthcare problem is an octopus with far-reaching tentacles, but the humanity of America demands solution.

Learn more about this author, Southern Housewife.
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