US needs to change its view of health care
By Kia Makarechi
Oct. 4, 2009 10:15 p.m.
On Sept. 29, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee chose superficial vestiges of reform over what many other industrialized nations in the world offer their citizens ““ the right to health care.
Technically, the Senate Finance Committee voted 15-8 to kill the public option, but there is a simple way to describe what happened.
Fifteen senators followed legislative precedent and chose to perpetuate the myth that health care reform is possible without the creation of some form of public option that would threaten insurance giants. It is not.
One could easily say that what is done is done, and that no one cares for a whiner (especially a whiner with an apparently liberal angle). So this column will not celebrate the dead too much. Instead, I’ll take us through the state of health care as it stands today.
After all, without the kick in the pants that the public option would potentially have dealt the insurance industry, this may be the state of health care for years to come.
America’s health care system, according to the World Health Organization, ranks 37 out of the 191 countries studied.
Here are the parameters: overall level of health, distribution of health in populations, responsiveness and distribution of finances.
When these are taken into account, it is clear why America’s health care system ranks so poorly.
With 46 million uninsured people living in America in 2007, health care is not exactly being distributed well among the general population.
Forty-six million people ““ nearly 20 percent ““ of the American public has no health insurance and must sometimes rely on visits to the emergency room.
It’s true that for some Americans, of course, the wealthiest Americans have access to among the best health care in the world.
Institutions such as UCLA demonstrate scientific zeal that this nation prides itself on when it comes to medicine.
And there is cause for hesitation when it comes to establishing a megabureaucracy.
Roee Shalev, a third-year political science and history student, expressed reservations about the risks inherent in a government backed plan: “As private companies don’t enjoy this sort of protection, it may be the case that a public option would run other private options out of business ““ though this would probably only affect the HMO and bottom bracket health care options.”
No business, including public health insurance, should be supported by taxpayer dollars without respect to its efficiency, Shalev said.
Yet the purpose of the public option is not to take over the industry. Rather, it had a far more capitalist purpose ““ to re-energize competition within the health care market.
One wonders just how long a system built on spending billions of dollars on medicine that remains inaccessible to at least one out of every five members of its society can survive.
What these wealthy people do not realize is that ““ save the insanely rich moguls (the type that are driving the debate on health care) ““ their wealth is relative to the wellbeing of the American public.
Take, for example, a 2007 Milken Institute study titled An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease.
Aptly outlining the insanity that underlies the claim that America “can’t afford to give everyone health care,” the report uncovers the enticing benefits of such a system.
According to the study, “the implementation of a national effort focused on prevention, early detection and chronic disease management could save the country hundreds of billions annually, with savings surpassing a trillion dollars annually in about 15 years.”
A trillion dollars a year.
Yet, members of both parties of our government, columnists from the right and left, and fervent sign-wavers all demand that we respect the sanctity of health care as a business.
In this country, health care ““ like alcohol, guns and tobacco ““ are businesses.
In America, the effects of your profit-thirsty businesses are irrelevant. In America, Google can’t get too big, but health care can.
Somehow in this debate, health care has become anti-capitalist, anti-rich people and thus, anti-American. The voices of reform in this country have been attacked as everything from fascist to communist (as though they are the same) to my personal favorite: naive.
Yes, it is naive to support a position that is supported by study after study after study.
It is naive to note that hospitals are being shut down every day in this country because they absorb cost-prohibitive emergency procedures that could be eliminated with far cheaper preventative-focused care.
It is naive, because it is not callous. It is naive, critics of universal health care would have you believe, because it not only says that America is capable of reducing needless death and sickness in this country, but that America should.
E-mail Makarechi at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].
