Make no bones about it, getting sick costs money and the medical industry is a business.

My father recently had an operation -- his first. He had an 80 percent blockage in his carotid artery, so it needed to get addressed. Now he’s home and doing fine. But as I walked through the paces with him last Friday, the only thing we could keep saying to one another is, "Could you imagine what it costs to run a place like this?"

In pre-op, we once again said, "Just the cost of this room alone, it must be through the roof." In post-op, we looked around and even in a bit of a postoperative haze my Dad still said, "Look at the money in this room."

Now I’ve been in hospitals before, so it’s not that I haven’t noticed the amount of equipment that it takes to run such a facility. I have noticed and I’m not envious of hospital administrators that have to keep up with the "Dr. Joneses" of the world.

Since you never get a second chance to make a first impression, it’s crucial that your facility is as state of the art as you can get. But to what end? As I said, my father had an operation and the bed they wheeled him around in was worth more than the vehicle I drive (the book value on my car is a little over $11,000).

The funny thing is as you walk the hallways of a hospital, you see these beds everywhere -- millions of dollars in hospital beds. It’s insane. There are things that hang from the ceiling that hold IVs that

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cost around $80 apiece, the IV holders that you wheel on the floor that are about $300 (and in post-op there must have been 50 of those right next to me dad’s bed). I could spend a day listing things and what they cost, but I think you get the idea.

So it costs money to get sick and there is big money in illness. And who’s left paying? You and me. When you look around a hospital, you can almost see why an emergency room visit costs what it does. I’m not justifying it, mind you, but it is what it is.

Which brings us to the importance of last Saturday’s House vote that passed their version of health care reform. While I believe the House bill takes us a step closer to taking better care of one another, it still has to get through the Senate and right now with loose cannons like Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman in there, it’s going to prove difficult.

But while my father (who has good health insurance) was under the knife, the wrangling was going on in the House about whether they could get the bill passed. Without health care coverage, my father would not have been able to afford the operation (which I’m sure cost in the tens of thousands) which means the artery would have ended up totally blocked, he probably would have had a stroke and probably would have died. Those are grim results if you don’t have the cash to care for yourself.

I’ve heard a lot of discussion about this not being a health care reform bill, but rather, an insurance reform bill. I would agree, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Insurers have deeper pockets to oppose a bill called insurance reform, so we’re forced to call it health care reform.

Here in the United States, we have some of the best medical people on the face of the Earth, but what good is it if not everybody has access to it? Until there’s no medical difference between rich and poor, insured and uninsured, then there can’t be reform. Right now, there’s someone with the same problem my father had who can’t even afford the consultation, let alone surgery. What the hell is up with that?

Fish is the morning talent on Classic Hits 92.7 FM. He also offers up his opinion on-line at www.whatdahell.net. E-mail him at fish@wkvt.com.