They include the following:

Over 40 million Americans have no health care insurance at all.

Those who have health care may lose it suddenly if they become unemployed through no fault of their own.

One may be denied health care coverage if a “pre-existing” condition exists.

Coverage may be suspended even while one is receiving treatment for a serious – life threatening – illness for something as simple as an administrative oversight.

There is no control of prices or premiums.  The Corporate Healthcare Monopoly can raise the cost of premiums at any time of its choosing without providing or needing a reason.

The lack of health insurance is the third leading cause of death in the United States; heart disease and cancer are the top two; hmm...might be a connection there.

This has been known for a very long time and is frequently cited by those in favor of improving health care coverage in the United States as reasons for doing so. So far, all efforts have been unsuccessful.

Those who support health care reform including President Obama himself have been under relentless attack during the past 8 months or so while the issues have been debated. One of the reasons is that the heath care industry in this country has a corporate monopoly status; this means that they have no competition, are unregulated and basically are able to conduct their business in any manner they choose. Examples of how they do this are outline above.

Thus while President Obama has been subjected to this abusive and illogical criticism, according to a New York Times piece appearing Saturday September 19, 2009 he nevertheless believes that none of the tactics used against him are based on race.  Personally I find this impossible to believe. My view is that his entire presidency is under attack because of race and health care reform that he supports and campaigned for is just the best current example.

If one looks for examples, there are many good ones showing the racial content of the criticism President Obama has received when he has made attempts to meet with groups of citizens in this country to openly discuss issues related to health care reform and specifically his concept of what health care reform would be.  However one wonders what the observed behavior of those who show up at some of these public meetings the president attends has to do with health care.  For example: 

He has been greeted by people carrying signs comparing him to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and other mass murderers. Some of these signs contain pictures of the President with swastikas carved into his fore head.

It continues to be a common belief by some who exist as the outer limits of reality that he is not a citizen of the United States in spite of indisputable evidence to the contrary – most importantly a valid birth certificate from the State of Hawaii establishing beyond any possible doubt that he was born in the United States and is a citizen of this country by birth.

The health care reform measures that he has supported have been called “socialist” designed to enhance the role the Federal government plays in the health care industry in this country.

Various other lies have been associated with the specifics of his health care reform agenda which I have detailed elsewhere and do not need to be repeated here.

Finally some members of American society have some who linked the possession of guns to health care reform debate and have openly carried firearms at meetings where the president has been scheduled to appear.

Others have discussed this as well. An example is Bob Herbert’s column in today’s (September 19, 2009) New York Times:

Sherri Goforth, an aide to a Republican state senator in Tennessee sending out a mass e-mail of a cartoon showing dignified portraits of the first 43 presidents, and then representing the 44th — President Obama — as a spook, a cartoonish pair of white eyes against a black background. When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama’s ancestors. Among the posters at last weekend’s gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.” These are bits and pieces of an increasingly unrestrained manifestation of racism directed toward Mr. Obama that is being fed by hate-mongers on talk radio and is widely tolerated, if not encouraged, by Republican Party leaders. It’s disgusting, and it’s dangerous. But it’s the same old filthy racism that has been there all along and that has been exploited by the G.O.P. since the 1960s. I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you’ve been wandering around with your eyes closed. Glenn Beck, one of the moronic maestros of right-wing radio and TV, assures us that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Some years ago, as the watchdog group Media Matters for America points out on its Web site, Beck said he’d like to beat Representative Charles Rangel “to death with a shovel.” There is nothing new about this racist rhetoric. Back in the 1970s Rush Limbaugh told a black caller: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”But the fact that a black man is now in the White House has so unsettled much of white America that the lid is coming off the racism that had been simmering at dangerously high temperatures all along. Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, said, “If someone had told me in February that there would be mainstream allegations that Obama was a racist and a fascist and a communist and a Nazi, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

This character assassination began immediately after the results of the 2008 Presidential election, that is to say, before President elect Obama was inaugurated as the 44^th President of the United States and assumed the duties of that office. These are examples I’ve cited elsewhere:

In Idaho it is reported that second and third grade students were chanting "assassinate Obama" on a school bus.

University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur.

Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apalacan Township, PA.

At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool."

Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted.

Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced.

Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

Again these were events that were taking place even before Mr. Obama took the Oath of Office as President. To reiterate my point, it is not simply health care policy that is causing opponents of President Obama to react to his role as president with racially incendiary language and acts; it is merely the most convenient excuse for behavior by those who cannot accept him as the duly elected President of the United States.

And when he assumed the responsibilities of the office he was elected - not appointed – to occupy, what kind of country did President Obama see?

The fundamentals of the economy were NOT good; the United States had just seen 8 years of greed and corruption. 

The nation was heading into a major recession, where unemployment was expected to possibly exceed 10% before the economy turned around. 

Major American corporations, not just financial entities, had failed or were on the verge of failure. 

The rest of the world was leaping ahead of the United States in all indices of a national economy and measures of what a government does to protect and "Promote the General Welfare" of its most vulnerable citizens.

The country was acrimoniously divided and engaged in two wars. 

The economic disaster was largely connected to the economic policies of the G.W. Bush administration with antecedents going back to Ronald Reagan.   It has been called Borrow and Spend.

In many ways what the new president found was an economy, military and National Security structure in ruin. 

So one has to wonder what some of the diminishing number of Republicans are getting at when they say they are interested in "getting their country back."  First they and their Confederate Pals need to understand the United States IS  NOT their country.  The United States is a Constitutional Republic.  Just who controls the government at any given time is decided by ELECTIONS.  And the last time these people had it, they left it in a huge mess. 

In 2008 there were elections and great efforts were made to insure thal all votes were counted.  Not surprisingly, this group of Confederate Pals lost big time.  If in their delusional state they still don't comprehend the intent of what they are advocating with their "tea bags",  let me spell it out:  any attempt to negate the results of an election by force of arms is sedition.  If they want to confront Federal law enforcement, I would invite them to bring it on.  They will never do that though as they are really cowards who are only good at preying on the weak and helpless.

At his inauguration, President Barack Obama said the following:

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: “Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.” America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

These eloquent words describe an America that may no longer exist; they describe Americans that were willing to suffer extreme hardships to guarantee the continued existence of the country they were a part of and in many cases gave their lives for. 

Are there Americans with the same commitment to the preservation of their country that are willing to accept the same sacrifices to be found anywhere today? There are of course exceptions, but for the most part I don’t see many that are.  

An incensed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel went up to GOP Reps. Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.) to complain about the outburst. "No president has ever had that happen," Emanuel said. "My advice is he apologize immediately. You know my number." Wilson did as Emanuel advised. After all that shouting, it's a wonder he wasn't too hoarse to place the call.

All I can add is play the video and look at the expressions from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.  One hopes there is security in Congress as nobody knows what wingnuts are really capable of.  What is contained on the previous link is so sick that I don't want to look at the words it contains.

However if one had been following the events at so-called "town hall" meetings around the country during the month of August, this behavior was totally déjà vue.  My thoughts were that I've seen this act before.  Furthermore did someone say there are no problems with medical care in the United States?

The first lady's box at the speech (was) a virtual medical ward: a woman with sarcoidosis, a colon cancer patient, a recurrent cancer survivor, a double amputee, two women with breast tumors, a woman with eye problems, a man with high cholesterol, two brain tumor survivors, the son of a brain cancer victim and the fathers of children who have seizures and hemophilia.

These are tragic situations.  Men, women, children, it doesn't matter.  One does not experience tragedy frequently.  So I'm wondering, why is there no feeling expressed for these people.  Can those who are oppossed to doing something, can they offer...anything?  An acknowledgement of reality, a smile perhaps or a glance.  But there is nothing, it is as if these people didn't exist.   

Clearly recognition of such things never disturb the thoughts of those lucky enough to be on the fast track of multi-million USD bonuses received for such meritorious achievements as running American corporations into brick walls and bankruptcy.  Oh yes, there are a lot of them that are  really good at doing things like this.

To reiterate, I don't enjoy writing about subjects like this and I know it is equally disturbing to read as well.  All I can say is that I believe it is important to continue bringing reality to the attention of as many as possible, as it is frequently quite difficult to comprehend without specific examples.   And I have to keep reminding myself that there are many people out there who do understand and have even experienced what I describe.  It is a very sad situation indeed for those of us living in a country with the world's largest and most productive economy. 

One finds though that the bounty is not widely shared.  In fact:

Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be. (T)he majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution.  Economists Paul Krugman and Timothy Smeeding and political scientists Larry Bartels and Nathan Kelly, point to public policy and partisan politics as an important cause of inequality. They point out that education, labor force, and demographic changes cannot be the sole cause of the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and that the U.S. is unique in having experienced such a rise in inequality - a trend that, if caused by education, labor force, and demographic factors, would have manifested itself in other developed nations. In addition, there is strong evidence that the party of the president and the ideological content of public policy have powerfully shaped the path of income inequality over time. While expertise, productiveness and work experience, inheritance, gender, and race had a strong influence on personal income, household income was largely affected by the number of income earners, contributing to inequality between households based on the number of earners in them. Yet, other causes for income inequality, especially some of those behind its recent rise, likely remain unknown. 

I have discussed elsewhere how wealth is maintained.  The simply answer is class warfare that is essentially managed and coordinated by the three branches of the U.S. Government.  In the 20^th Century for example, virtually all of the great presidents were Democrats.  

 Theodore Roosevelt, who is ranked among the greatest, became so sick of it that he eventually departed the Republican party. 

If John McCain III wants to be remembered as something other than a spoiled military brat, he should start drawing analogies.  It should be quite clear by now that when someone runs for public office, whatever they did in the past, good or bad, is open to use ad hoc by one's adversaries. And that applies to heroes as well as villains. 

I'm very saddened about all the suffering that Senator McCain had to go through in that insane war.  I know that it isn't exactly something one ever recovers from.   Beyond saying that however there isn't anything I can do. 

Additionally for those who didn't know, this is an era where anything a political candidate or other notable person does or says in public is likely to be recorded, placed on the internet and seen all over the world.  FYI...

The concept that one becomes wealthy by their own efforts is largely a myth.  Wealth as well as poverty is essentially inherited, a process usually taking place over generations.  And according to U.S. Census data, the number of Americans with health insurance of any kind is going down.   Most of this is due to job loss, there is no safety net in the U.S. so don’t fall off the high wire because there is nothing between you and the pavement.

The only critique I would offer of the President is to question why he ever attempted to deal with Republicans.  As ThomasFriedman observed the United States is a One Party Democracy.  In such a system, one party attempts to enact legislation while there is another group which really isn't a party, in this case nothing more than a collection of old white southern men who have no potency for anything other than negation. 

Montana Senator Max Baucus announced his intention to formally introduce legislation that will largely fulfill the health care objectives Democrats campaigned on in 2008 regardless of Republican signoffs.  It will be good but not perfect.  That shouldn't be a problem though, time moves in only one direction.  That is part of the design.

When I was growing up in the United States in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, courses in topics like U.S. History and U.S. Government were taught from the 7^th grade through the 12^th grade.  Then once entering college, courses in English Literature and History of Civilization were still required to obtain a Bachelors Degree even if one happened to be specializing in a scientific curriculum.   Even before the 7^th grade one learned how Congress enacted legislation and how it became law.    Through this process it became apparent that the branch of government with the most power was the legislative branch, that is, the Congress.  One of the main responsibilities of the Executive Branch and President was to execute the laws of the United States. 

As an example, after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” which perpetuated segregation really wasn’t equal and therefore through the “due process clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment was unconstitutional and therefore invalid.  Anyone interested can go through the references I’ve cited to obtain the details. 

To summarize what happened, after the Supreme Court decision the first test of its status became critical when the Governor of Arkansas ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine African American students from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When  U.S. Federal Court Judge Ronald Davies said “no you can’t do that” to the Governor of Arkansas and ruled that the nine African American students must be enrolled, it fell upon the President to enforce this.  The President can “Federalize” the National Guard troops of any state whenever he decides it is necessary to do so, and this was one of the steps taken by President Eisenhower.  He also ordered the 101^st Airborne Division of the United States Army to deploy in Little Rock and enforce the ruling that was rendered in U.S. Federal Court.  

Now that’s how government works in a Constitutional Republic like the United States.  FYI:   Some misunderstand what a democracy is, at best the United States could be called a Representative Democracy although at times it seems that it is only special interests are being represented.  

Regardless of what it is called, the fact is that in the United States the President can order Federal Troops to enforce the laws of the nation if it becomes necessary.  Anyone interested in history will find that this issue was the primary basis for the American Civil War.  In brief, the Federal Constitution and the laws enacted under it are the supreme authority in the United States.  This occurs even if a significant number of people may not agree with what takes place when they are enforced.  

Now that I’m retired and observe what is going on in the country, it appears that no one understands this today.   The current Governor of Texas for example has speculated in public that his state might enjoy its composite reality more if it were not part of the USA.  Any action along these lines would set up another one of the interesting scenarios where the President would have to counter.  It wouldn't be too difficult.  He could simply tell the Secretary of Defense to order the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood Texas to deploy sufficient assets in Austin to put the Governor of Texas under arrest and restore order.  Indications are that the present Governor of Texas may not be serving beyond his current term.   That said, people in states like Texas and Alaska really need to think seriously about the potential consequences of their seditionist fantasies.   It is unfortunate that I find it necessary to digress into this topic but obviously some simply don't understand it.   Do they still teach history in the public schools?

In any event, how does this exploration of the extent of Consitutional authority in a country like the United States impact events happening in August 2009?   The answer is that there are a lot of people (tens of millions) in the United States that are really scared and really crazy.  And what can be seen happening in the debate over health insurance right now (August 2009) is an example.

The BBC (they certainly didn’t understand what was going on) … quoted liberal Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's explanation: "They want to get a little clip on YouTube of an effort to disrupt a town meeting and to send the congressman running for his car. This is an organized effort . . . you can trace it back to the health insurance industry."  So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

And what is critical to understand is that it isn’t just the little people carrying signs and yelling in front of the cameras that are caught up in this process.  There are vested and powerful interests that are also involved.

The orchestration of incivility happens, too, and it is evil. Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror -- powerful elites -- find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.

These interest groups are primarily those who supported the presidency of George W. Bush and who happened to have lost the last two national elections; the outcome in 2008 resulted in Barack Obama becoming president.  What happened after that event is something that I discuss in greater detail in Did the Republican Party lose an Election or a Civil War and The Inward Circle. 

Further as Mike Lupica correctly points out in President Obama is the real target of health care protesters, not policy:

So much of this comes from people who get all their information from right-wing media, or their cheerleading from political has-beens like Betsy McCaughey, people who don't see this as a fight for better and more inclusive health care, but who now see it as something grander and more noble, a fight to reclaim America from Obama.  They couldn't win the fight last November, when he laid out John McCain and Palin and a whole party with one election, so they try to do it now, with lies and rather amazing distortions. They want everybody to believe that if Obama gets his way, he'll eventually be in charge of insurance and doctors and whether you use CVS or Duane Reade. He's a Socialist selling socialized medicine. He'll kill Grandma. Come on. The notion that this is all honest dissent is just one more lie. … They don't just want to hijack this debate, they want to hijack his presidency. The rest of it, about your coverage and everything else, is just the cover story.

It is a subversion of the Constitutional authority of the Federal Government that is at play.  A lot of Americans just can’t accept Barack Obama as the legitimately elected President of the United States.  This fear that engenders mob scenes in front of video cameras is really that simple to comprehend:   “He’s leading us to socialism; he’s going to take away our guns.”   And the lowest common denominator in electronic entertainment is pounding this message out to everyone who needs it 7x24.

What we are seeing now then is nothing new.  Every other nation in the world with an advanced technological economy has guaranteed health care for all of its population.  In the United States things are different.  One issue is there are at least 40 million Americans with no form of health insurance at all.   And how does one fall into the orbit of the uninsured?  

The easiest ways are these:

1. Becoming unemployed and losing the insurance provided by one’s employer.
2. Being unable to afford individual insurance from a corporate insurance corporation for one’s self and family.
3. Being denied coverage by a corporate insurance entity because of a pre-existing medical condition.

It has been this way for dozens of decades and many progressive segments of the country and progressive presidents as well have attempted to change this situation.  The critical issue is that no insurance corporation will provide insurance to those who can’t pay for it and these same corporations have sufficient influence in controlling the media treatment of the subject as well as manipulating congress to block enactment of any national health care system like what one finds in the other advanced technical countries.  You see, something special has to be done for those who simply can’t afford insurance on their own.  The Health Insurance corporations enjoy the position of an economic monopoly in the United States and will never provide coverage to those uninsured on their own volition.  One must study the history and role of corporations in the United States if this is not readily understood.

This condition applied to retired persons over age 65 before the enactment of Medicare in 1965. Medicare like Social Security is a Federal program, in case anyone is unaware.  There must be something like Medicare to cover the uninsured today.  This could be accomplished in one of several ways.  It could be a Federal program like Medicare but there are other possibilities that may be more easily implemented in a political economy like one finds in the United States.  What has surfaced now is a plan that would be administered as a not-for-profit private entity.

Many progressives would oppose this and feel that a private not-for-profit entity would not have sufficient scalability to effectively compete with the private insurance monopoly.  In addition to finding a method to bring insurance to the 40 million or more that have no insurance; this must occur to bring down the overall costs of medical care.  This implies regulation of the Health Care industry as it now exists and the question is whether the private not-for-profit entity would have sufficient influence in the economy to achieve this. 

However this is how any legislation is going to be judged: whether medical care will be reformed and costs controlled in a way that does not remind one of the methods used by the Obama Administration has dealt with the economic disaster that appeared as a hugh image on the radar during the final months of the presidency of G.W. Bush.   Actually is was discernable long before this but it simply wasn’t the habit of the Bush Administration to look for such things as disasters.   I discuss this and the obvious consequences in Developing a Safety Culture in High Risk Environments.

Many Democrats want to see what they consider the legacy of their party’s greatest presidents, really the great presidents of the 20^th Century, restored.  And the essential function that must be restored in their view is the role of corporate regulation in the U.S. economy by the Federal Government.

If progressives had real trust in Obama’s commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn’t command that kind of trust. Partly it’s a matter of style — as many people have noted, he has been weirdly reluctant to make the moral case for universal care, weirdly unable to show passion on the issue, weirdly diffident even about the blatant lies from the right. Partly it’s a spillover from his other policies: by appointing an economic team that’s Rubin redux, by taking such a kindly attitude to the banks, he has squandered a lot of progressive enthusiasm.Add in the dealmaking as part of the health care process itself, and progressives can be forgiven for having the impression that Obama (a) takes them for granted (b) is way too easily rolled by the other side. 

To sum up, there are two things at work against true reform in the Health Care system in the United States.  One is the corporate monopoly of Health Insurance corporations who don’t want to concede anything that they now have.  They want to continue deciding who they insure, what they will cover and how high premiums for their insurance will be.  They are opposed to anything resembling government regulation of their corporate conduct. 

Without control and regulation of the Health Insurance monopoly, the costs of health care will in all likelihood continue to increase; I see no reason to think that it won’t.  This affects other sectors of the economy such as Medicare and Social Security, the two signature programs that protect working, relatively healthy but less than wealthy, people in the United States from financial debacle.  It also keeps the cost of Health Care, a different subject than Health Insurance, in an ascending course.  Thus if one reforms Health Insurance, bringing economic competition to a monopolized sector of the economy, the cost and quality of health care should improve.  This really is the most important issue that can possibly be affected in the political landscape that now exists in the Legislative and Executive branches of government. 

If one seriously wants to reduce the profile of the Federal government in society, giving productive livelihoods to those who are now uninsured and living at the margins of society, now is the time to take the steps necessary to achieve it.  The necessary requirement though is to reform and regulate the corporate health insurance monopoly.  People at the margins of society will also need to overcome their fears and understand why their existence is where it objectively resides.

The other factor working against Health Care reform in the United States is the xenophobic reaction of a substantial part of the U.S. population to the presidency of Barack Obama which does not seem to have limits.  People openly carry hand guns to events where the President appears.  Nothing like this has ever happened before; it is insulting to supporters of his party and raises concerns about the ability of the Secret Service to protect the president (link to video interview). 

Health Care reform is an issue but really only one of many critical issues facing the United States today. 

One could say that the public behavior one sees seemingly engendered by an attempt to deal with the reoccurring problem of providing health care for everyone must end or at least understood for what it really is: a lingering fear obscenely exploited by individuals who still define the world in simplistic terms for self serving motives that subvert the chance to bring rationality to a system of problems that will take far more than one election cycle to remedy.   

So regardless of what may happen in the election in 2010, Democrats should forget about Republican obstructionist fear tactics and enact the best Health Care system they can provide the American people.  This almost certainly means having the functional equivalent of a so-called "public plan" that has premiums that are affordable for the working class/middle class and doesn’t discriminate against people with typical health conditions for their age.

Members of Congress as well as President Obama need to understand that this is a chance for them to accomplish something really important and good for the country, an event that has been needed for a very long time.  It is highly likely that history will judge those who got it done as heroes and the special interest obstructionists attempting to derail it as villains.   So why be concerned about them?

On the other hand, the scope of the problem considerably exceeds the issue of health care reform alone.  If the effort breaks apart once again, the consequences are likely to be much more unfavorable to the United States than past failures engendered. 

Just do the math.    Because if you do, you will see there is a genuine reason to be apprehensive about the future unless major reform in Health Care is forthcoming.