Only some of us A-merry-cans deserve to have good health.

"Black Americans still get far fewer operations, tests, medications and other life-saving treatments than whites, despite years of efforts to erase racial disparities in health care and help African Americans live equally long and healthy lives, according to three major studies being published today.

Blacks' health care has started to catch up to whites' in some ways, but blacks remain much less likely to undergo heart bypasses, appendectomies and other common procedures. They receive fewer mammograms and basic tests and drugs for heart disease and diabetes, and they have fallen even further behind whites in controlling those two major killers, according to the first attempts to measure the last decade's efforts to improve equality of care.

Together, the research paints a discouraging picture of the nation's progress in closing the gap for one of the fundamental factors that affect well-being -- health care -- during a period when blacks have made progress in areas such as income and education.

"We have known for 20 years that we have a problem in our health care system: that blacks and whites do not receive equal care. We had hoped all the attention paid to this topic would result in some improvement. What we found is we have not made much progress," said Ashish K. Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health, who led one of the studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "This should be a call to action to make the changes needed to make sure people get equal care."

That was taken from a piece written by Rob Stein in the Washington Post back in 2005. Fast forward four years and the health care debate rages on in these divided states of A-merry-ca. The insurance lobby and partisan republicans are fighting with everything they have to keep the status quo, and all indications from the latest polls is that they are winning.

For me, it's rather simple: I trust the government to deliver affordable health care and to be fair in doing it, more than I do the private insurance companies. Sorry, but with them [the insurance companies] it's all about the bottom line. When I go to sites like this and read about the uphill battle poor people and people of color face in this country when it comes to health care, I have to wonder what the hell some of these black conservatives (Now there is an oxymoron for your ass. If you are black, just what the hell are you conserving?) are smoking when they jump up and jig in defense of the health care status quo in this country. Do they really think that all the money that's pumped into R&D with these drug companies is being done to deliver drugs to market to cure diseases that affect minority communities? Please!

If I was king of the world there would not even be an option. (The "public plan" option, in my never humble opinion, is bullshit. Political compromise by the usual suspects in Washington. And let's throw the "voucher plan" into that mix while we are at it.) Health coverage would be nationally run by the government and it would be a single payer system. I am not even willing to listen to the bullshit talking points from the right anymore. Rationing health care? Really? As if health care isn't already rationed. The truth is, that in these divided states of A-merry-ca, the wealthy get better health care than the poor. If you are poor health care is already rationed. Eighteen thousand people die in this country every year because they can't afford proper health care. So yea, for them, I would say that health care is pretty much out of their reach.

Oh but field, I just don't want the government running health care. The government just can't be trusted to do something so important. Another dumb ass wingnut talking point. Let me see now, the last time I checked, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, health coverage for public employees, elected officials, and the military was all being run by the government, and that seems to be working out just fine.

But field, what about our taxes going up? Wrong again wingnut. Your taxes won't be more than you are already paying in co-pays, deductibles, self employment plans like Cobra , and your out of pocket expenses. Another myth manufactured by the right to throw the dreaded T word into the debate.

See field, I always knew you were a Socialist, you are just like that damn Obama.

"Deo volente" my friends "Deo volente."