Health Care for All US Residents!

I'm late with this, but...better late than never...although really I have no excuse, as a multiply health-impaired and often financially impaired US citizen. Well, come to think of it, my recent hospital stints, followed by much sorting through and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over labyrinthine, obscurantist, yet all too clearly threatening!! piles of insurance paperwork, do account for some of the delay. Yeah, I know, I know, I'm the Lucky One, the one who does have coverage...Things could be worse---however---need they be this bad?

Michael Moore, director of the somehow hilarious (given the subject matter) "Sicko," has a list of simple but powerful action steps that US residents can take to stand up and be counted for nationwide health care.

Just Do It! And please put in a good word not simply for us sickos, but for pregnant women who can't get affordable prenatal, labor & delivery, or postpartum care, and that's just the beginning of their troubles.

In creating the Nonviolent Choice Directory's Mother Child Health Care Access by Country section (direct URL http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/motherchildhealth-careaccess.html), I have learned a lot of things about other nations' commitment to real (nonabortion) reproductive and other basic health care that simply put the US to shame...well beyond what Moore shows in the film.

Did you know, for example, that all women in Ecuador are entitled by statute to free maternity care? Ecuador, where per capita income is about $4500/year, as opposed to the US per capita of over $20,000/year. Is the difference so much in the money, or in the social priorities of the two countries?

If it's a gap in social priorities, my fellow Americans, let's learn how to close it. Quick. We of all peoples cannot plead that money is foreign to our shores. We just aren't spreading it about properly.