Health Insurance for Diabetics: will the new administration start walking the talk?

The concept of Health Insurance for Diabetics has been a topic of great concern for a number of years now, but so far, we haven't seen any action. Even when the economy was still healthy, the high cost of health insurance coverage prevented many people from obtaining health insurance. It was simply not affordable. Now, health insurance coverage has become a critical problem for many more Americans. People formerly covered under an employee sponsored plan, now laid off, have no income and no health insurance as well. It's time for the talk to become fruitful and get something done for a change.

So often, politicians who oppose the idea of Health Insurance for Diabetics try to rationalize their position by labeling it with, 'That's a socialist concept. This is a democracy!' As if that rationale suffices to close the argument. In fact, we are a republic. While socialistic countries provide every citizen with health insurance coverage, at no cost, so do countries like France, Britain and Norway. The socialist label is nothing but a red herring.

Surely you recall the news reports describing bus loads of elderly people crossing the borders to Canada and Mexico to buy the medications they needed, but could not afford to fill at a U.S. pharmacy. In both Canada and Mexico, the identical medications sell for a fraction of the price we must pay here at home. Why?

Many people with serious health conditions, such as heart disease, must take medications that help keep them alive. There are more and more reports that reveal that there are huge numbers of such people, many elderly, who are simply not able to buy their medicines. They go without. Who knows what the consequences have been? I haven't seen any statistics on this.

It doesn't take a genius to see that, when serious health conditions go untreated, due to a lack of health insurance coverage, the condition only worsens. I know one man who, unable to afford health Health Insurance for Diabetics, ended up having a heart attack. His hospital bill came to $30,000. He'll spend the rest of his life paying it off. A universal health insurance coverage program would have allowed him access to a doctor and the man might have avoided this disastrous outcome.

When our government can hand out hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue huge corporations, while allowing its own citizens to have their health compromised, or to even die, due to an inability to get life saving prescriptions, there's surely something wrong with such values.

We know that there are adequate models of universal health insurance coverage available, ones that work well and benefit the entire society. It's hard to understand why our country can't do the same. Surely, we pay enough in taxes to cover such a program.

Perhaps it's time for every individual to write their Congress and Senate members, the Surgeon General and the President. Their offices receiving a flood of mail might give them pause. We can only hope.