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That is what the people of Boston University’s prestigious School of Public Health tell us.  After many years of work, the professors and doctors at this excellent university have come up with a solution that may well offer the only way out of the terrible quagmire that is the U.S. health care industry.

Happily, it is not at all a complicated fix.  In the interest of space we can condense the idea down to basics—America needs to set up local co-operatives across the country, to be run by our best and brightest local doctors.  For far too long health care in America has been ruthlessly controlled by big business.

Our doctors should have control of treatment protocols, establish rules of behavior and act as guardians over health care delivery in the territory covered by their co-operative.  Any doctor, hospital, insurance company, lawyer, pharmaceutical company, nursing home, clinic, etc. that refused to play by the rules of common decency and honesty would be barred from the co-op.

In numerous previous columns I’ve stated that after 45 years in the health insurance business, I have found the vast majority of the health care professionals in the U.S. to be very competent, caring and decent people.  With that said, it is also true that our health care system, by far the largest industry in the U.S., is wildly out of control.  As good as the good guys are, they are not minding the store.

With costs inflating so fast that privatized, U.S. health care will soon consume 25% of our entire economy, we don’t have a moment to waste if we hope to correct the situation.  Failure to enact comprehensive reform at this time will almost surely result in another 10 year political hiatus on the matter, maybe longer, and we cannot afford that.

There is no doubt regarding the severity of this matter.  In my last column I stated that U.S. health care has become a cancer on our society.  In truth, that concept was first put forth by no less than The Honorable David M. Walker, the 7th comptroller General of the U.S. and director of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for 10 years.  To paraphrase Mr. Walker, it is not some terrorist hiding in a cave with a towel wrapped around his head we need to fear, it is the cancerous results of our own fiscal irresponsibility that may actually bankrupt the nation.

We are now facing so many health care epidemics and problems that I don’t have room to list them all in this column.  But as a sample, Google the following subjects for facts and figures that will curl your hair so badly you may have to wrap a towel around your head:  Our juvenile onset diabetes problem; the epidemic of homeless veterans suffering from PTSD;  the vast number of middle-school children being prescribed mood-altering drugs; the massive number of U.S. children, including babies, being prescribed adult ant-psychotic drugs; our adult and child obesity problems; the 110 million cat scans that U.S. health care will perform in 2010; the over-treatment of U.S. elderly so extensive it is now labeled elder-abuse; the number of States that are presently suing the U.S. pharmaceutical industry for abusive drugging of our children; a massive increase in autism of our children; enormous increases in health insurance premiums; soaring malpractice premiums and on and on and on.

The most frightening thing about all of this is that the people that are causing the problems are having a great deal of success in directing blame away from themselves.   That so many Americans are falling for the socialism, communism, death camps and destruction of Medicare propaganda is ample proof of the effectiveness of the political, media and tea party blitzes that have hidden the true facts from so many.

The simple truth is the majority of our health care problems are caused by thieves, wastrels and scoundrels.  And I, for one, could not care less about the politics of these grotesquely greedy people who could not care less about who they harm in their insatiable lust for greenbacks.  I just want them out of America’s pockets, and real soon.

I am aware that many of you will read these words as a political statement by me.  But I have suggested that you do your own due diligence—go to Google and find out for yourself the truth of the areas of concern I mentioned above.  As an example, type in “big pharma drugs children” and read just the first few articles of the more than 400,000 hits, and weep.  Then ask yourself how many more millions of kids will we allow our brutal health care system to harm before we wake up?

Let me put it this way, does anyone actually believe America has a bright future while allowing our big-business health care system to profit by drugging half of America’s kids instead of teaching them how to eat and exercise?

We need to fix this situation and real soon because if we can’t see our way through this problem, how the heck do we think we will fix anything else?

Health care reform is the seminal principal of the United States.