Dose of Reality: We Haven't Hit Bottom Yet

In the February Dose of Reality, Neil Davis writes:

Back in the 1950s before Alaska achieved statehood, my father was assistant director of the Fairbanks federal prison and then director of the Nome federal prison. In those capacities he saw many people with problems that they sometimes surmounted but often did not. That experience led him to believe that a person headed downward had to hit a floor before bouncing back upward to put his life back in order. I recall him saying of one of his prisoners, “That guy has not hit bottom yet; his life will get worse until he gets there, then maybe he can rebound up to where he can live a decent life.”

It seems to me that this is where the American public now is on health care reform: things are bad but they are going to have to get a lot worse before the public finally rebels against the insane for-profit health care system that it has allowed to come into existence.

Davis provides a few grim statistics to show just how bad health care in this country really is—and worse, how bad the trends in heath care have become, relating to bankruptcies, child mortality, poverty, and CEO salaries.