Politickin' With John Brown: Health Care Reform's Sick Past

Nothing's new under the sun—especially the administration's inability to push through meaningful health reform.

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Visit John Brown’s website and check back each Thursday for a new “Politickin With John Brown” post.

KRS-ONE once claimed that all he truly needed was "health, wealth, and knowledge of myself." In America, that's never been easy—especially the first part. Being founded on extreme capitalistic principles, the U.S.A. has a grim history of palsied and diseased healthcare. Even though the country spends more of its GDP on the health industry than any other U.N. member, the money doesn't go to actual care, but to bureaucratic purgatory and the enormous coffers of the private insurers. We're still the only industrialized nation without universal coverage.

With 47 million people living on a prayer, President Obama today held his health care summit to try to force the GOP's hand to work together on some level of reform. But it's not easy when so many politicians are subsidiaries of insurance companies. The battle for universal coverage stretches all the way back to the beginning of last century, and trust—even today, the odds aren't in the peoples favor. Here's a look back; careful, thouh, it might just make you queasy...

Obama Holds Health Care Summit, 2010
• Things looked bright at the end of the year when the House finally agreed on a lukewarm reform bill. But after Scott Brown shocked the left, health reform looked doomed once again. Now, with the bipartisan standoff summit finally underway, it's clear that politics is hurting any possibility for productivity, with Obama reminding his fiery rival McCain that "we're not campaigning, the election is over." Ouch! Old wounds run deep, fam.

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