The new food recommendations call for a much greater amount of vegetables and fruit, with smaller portions of carbohydrates, fats and meat.

Harvard’s School of Public Health  a slightly different version of the healthy eating plate  from USDA’s presumably due to the influence of agribusiness and commodity interests on the USDA.

You can see a comparison on their website, along with 5 tips for using the healthy plates and pyramid.  The healthy plate-pyramid are handy guidelines for anyone who desires to make positive changes in their diet because diet is a basic factor in health outcomes.

I really had hoped  that the new Health Care Reform Law would put an end to the Big Insurance Lobby’s stranglehold over our health care.

Guess that was wrong.

“‘I was a stranger and you never made me feel welcome, lacking clothes and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.’  Then it will be their turn to ask, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or lacking clothes, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?’  Then he will answer, ‘In truth I tell you, in as far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.’” — Matthew 25:43-46

In this parable of the Last Judgment, Jesus states that people are to be judged by their works of mercy,  as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.

In the United States today, a broken health care system separates human beings into sheep and goats as if they are cattle.  Rationing of health care does not start in some future scenario.  It is a reality today.

Previously I enjoyed the benefits of group health insurance coverage provided by an employer.  Then for the past five years I was self-employed and had to purchase an individual policy for myself.   I faithfully paid premiums to Blue Cross Blue Shield so that I could keep health insurance coverage.  The first thing I learned with it was that certain conditions I had were to be excluded from any coverage because they were “pre-existing.”

Secondly, I learned that the insurance was relatively affordable as long as I didn’t need it.  But when I did that would make the premium rates and deductibles I had to pay for increase. And finally I have learned what it is like to be deemed “unworthy” and excluded altogether from health insurance.

That is how rationing exists in the US today.  People are divided into groups of haves and have-nots.  We are a two-tiered society, where the fortunate ones have full access to health care coverage, and the others can fend for themselves.

In recent weeks I have been following the health care reform debate closely.  Thanks to the internet we have a free flow of information that cannot be controlled by the media.  On the internet citizens express their outrage at the injustice that is the American health care system of today.

There are many encouraging developments every day as people get organized and speak up for universal health care.

Americans who are denied health insurance coverage by insurers are essentially being told, “you are not worthy,”  because the insurer has deemed their condition as not profitable enough for them.   They have become second class citizens of the US who do not have equal access to health care.  See my previous blog post, The Baucus Plan and 44,000 Uninsured Deaths a Year for more on this.

Can the Congress seriously believe that we can wait until 2013 to start health care reform?  What can they be thinking?  An estimated 44,000 people are dying each year, that is 122 per day.

At a minimum we need a robust public option, or as Dr. Howard Dean has proposed, to open Medicare in 2010 to people between 55 and 65 years old who lack coverage.

We must keep the pressure on Congress to enact the sweeping health care reform we need with a robust public option.

One reader commented, “I agree with so much of what you say, but having had direct experience of co-ops, if done right, there is no reason why they can’t work just as well as the so-called ‘public option’”.

Health care co-ops were put forward by Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota as a substitute for a public option, which he reasoned could not pass the Senate.   They might work well in his state where co-ops are a strong tradition, but in many other states with different demographics, there would be less probability of success. The idea seems to have come out of the blue.

Though I too have had positive experiences with co-ops, I remain skeptical that they could ever offer a credible alternative to the private insurance companies. I have been a member of ag co-ops, an electric co-op, a marketing co-op, and several credit unions, as well as a rural health co-op startup that closed after two years.

The problem with the co-op idea is that there are only a couple of successful functioning health co-ops in the United States today. Noone can make a prediction about how this idea might work. Where is the groundswell of public support rallying for co-ops?

So little is known about them, that there is none.
An NPR story:  Senator Eyes Co-ops for All Fifty States quotes several knowledgeable experts on co-ops who reach the same conclusion.

What we might get with co-ops is a hodgepodge of fifty different versions, with varying results. Co-ops would be a risky experiment, not a comprehensive solution to a national problem. Why waste time, effort and money on such foolishness, when we need real solutions to our health care crisis.

The public option would still provide the best way to offer true competition in the insurance marketplace and bring down health care costs.

Confessions, St. Augustine
Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence
The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis
Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
The Journals of John Wesley, John Wesley
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
A Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
Interior Castle, Theresa of Avila
The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds on Prayer, E. M.Bounds
The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day

I find new developments and encouraging news on Twitter every day.

For example, the latest New York Times/CBS opinion poll found 65% of Americans in favor of a public option, but downplays the possibility that the public option might actually be included in the final version of the bill.

The real faces and stories of Americans who support the public option in health care reform are shown in this Youtube video.   There’s nothing slick about this, the faces and simple messages shown tell a compelling story.  It might be an informative experience of every Congressional representative could actually watch it.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are trying every delaying tactic possible to stall the progress on getting the Baucus bill out of committee while more Americans lose their health care coverage by the day.  They continue to repeat the lie that public health care programs in the UK and Canada are failures.

But public pressure must be starting to get through, because some Senators such as Sherrod Brown of  Ohio and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia are beginning to predict the public option will pass.

One can only hope.  In the meantime, keep up the calls and emails to Congress in favor of the public option.

Sorry that won’t work for me.  I would actually prefer a single payer system such as they have in Canada, or some other public system that other civilized developed countries provide for their citizens.  But being a practical person, I realize that single payer doesn’t stand much of a chance here.  The public option was supposed to be the compromise.  Then came the word that won’t work because the Republicans won’t support it, so it must be watered down to co-ops.   Co-ops would be a risky experiment that will waste more time and unfortunately people’s lives.

I don’t consider myself to be a political activist.  At my age there are plenty of other ways I would rather spend my time, and I’m getting tired of filling out email forms on government websites.  I have been one of those so-called “reliable”  faithful Democratic voters.  The Democrats have been talking health care forever, only the reason they could never provide us with health care they said was the Republicans controlling either the Presidency or one or the other house of Congress.  Well now the Democrats are running the whole show, so it’s time to deliver.  No more whining and hand-wringing about the Republicans.  If they can’t make good on their promises this time, this is one voter who will start staying home.

Of course, we all know the Democrats never like to “miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”  Too many of them have been out to lunch with the health industry lobbyi$t$.  It has even been reported that a health insurance lobbyist actually wrote the Baucus bill.

Case in point, this morning’s story on NPR by Peter Overby, “Who’s Representing the Uninsured on Capitol Hill?” Overby talks about Mike Ross, a “blue dog Democrat”  Congressman from Arkansas, who is opposed to the public option, and who coincidentally also just recently received over $100,000 for his campaign committee and a PAC that he operates from, guess who, the health care industry.

Overby then quotes one of Ross’s constituents at a town hall meeting in his district, “Many of those individuals who would need a public health care option are those who are not likely to be able to take two hours out of their day to go to a public event like that town hall,” says Kevin Motl, a history professor at Ouachita Baptist University who attended the meeting. “They were too busy earning hourly wages and trying to keep roofs above their children’s heads. Those voices are not going to be present in that discourse.”

That’s exactly what’s bothering me these days.  While people without health insurance are at work or standing in the unemployment line, the Senate and Congress are out to lunch with the in$urance industry lobby.  Literally.

The Baucus Plan as introduced will do little to remedy this situation unless it is amended and strengthened during the legislative process going forward.    One wonders how many stories like this have to come out before the Congress wakes up and gets informed about the actual health care crisis in the US today.  At this point the Max Baucus plan seems like a hoax or a cruel joke to be perpetrated upon the American public– giving more money and control to the in$urance industry in the guise of  “health care reform.”