Is it Ethical not to reform healthcare in the United States?

At any given moment in the United States about twenty percent of our citizens are without health insurance.
Essentially that means they are without access to healthcare because of its cost.

Currently in the United States it is legal for the health insurance industry to ration care - by denying or discontinuing coverage for selected procedures conditions or people when we need it most.

The United States pays more for healthcare per capita than any other developed country in the world and yet outcomes are worse than any other developed country. (T.R.Reid is quite eloquent in reporting - in his book Healing America - the results of the World Health Organization's study on these points. The study by the way was designed by a Harvard medical professor.)

We are the only country in the developed world that has no method in place for limiting the cost of medical care and the cost of medical insurance.

As far as a public option, we are the only developed country in the world that does not offer one.

In fact the closest model to ours for delivering healthcare is the third world.

Is it ethical to allow these conditions to continue?

I don't think so.

Nan Hayworth, Greg Ball and their Republican colleagues DO think it is ethical to deny healthcare to their constituents, to allow the health insurance industry to ration care, to allow costs to continue to spiral out of control and for all but the most affluent Americans to have only sub-standard care - unless they are covered by traditional Medicare (not privatized Medicare Advantage) or the VA - accessed only through an often incomprehensible maze of red tape.

(By the way competition in the health insurance industry will control costs only for the health insurance industry not for us.)

I think the Republican position is astounding and I think it is equally astounding that so many Americans agree with them.

I think it is unethical NOT to reform healthcare in the United States. We must reform healthcare and health insurance to benefit the American people not to benefit the healthcare industry. They will survive and they will provide a higher quality of care. They do everywhere else in the developed world.

• bruce's blog