Before you begin reading, please take note that this will be a lengthy essay. I believe that up to this point I have never written anything of such immediate importance to the American people. I owe it to the issue at hand to give it the full length and time necessary to fully articulate what is at stake.
Six months ago, I wrote in
"The Three Transgressions" my opinion on how we ourselves have provoked the problems with our Health Care system. Chief among my concerns was addressing the desire for public health care. I deemed it a political diversion, a red herring, something designed to keep our eyes away from the real focus. In some ways, I remain steadfast in this belief. Our reliance on pharmaceutical companies built on the principle of keeping everyone just sick enough is an abomination upon our society. However, on another topic, my view has changed entirely.
We need a system of universal health care. I am going to explain why, and point-by-point address every concern, legitimate or fallacious, which prevents us from a country as caring for all of our citizens, and how we can make this a reality.
1) Universal Coverage and the Natural MonopolyPoliticians who are against social health care or even simply having a public option will tell you that the real way to drive down costs is to deregulate. If we give private health insurers more leeway with how they do business, it will reduce costs for them and let them lower costs for their patients. Lowering costs will lead to competition, further giving insurers cause to make things easier for their customers. That's capitalism at its finest - you introduce competition, and the first thing that will happen is lower prices to attract more people.
The people who tell you this are either deliberately misleading you or actually have no idea how insurance works.
Insurance operates by pooling risk -the more people under one umbrella, the more the risk is spread out.
It is therefore
impossible for any private insurer to provide coverage as well as the government can.
I'll explain another way; you are paying for electricity. When you use electricity during the month, the power company bills you for however much you use. If you use less, you pay less. More, and you pay more. What you do with your power does not affect anybody else using the same grid as you. To compare health insurance to this system or others like it is a
lie.There is no business model in the world comparable to insurance. I repeat,
there is no business model in the world. You cannot draw comparisons between health insurance and utilities companies, or car sales, or department stores.
The reason is that when you pay for health insurance you are getting
nothing. Health insurance companies do not provide a service for you. They bill you each month hoping that you will never in your lifetime call upon them to do anything. And in the event that they do, you still aren't getting a service - hospitals, doctors, drug companies - they provide the service. The insurance company simply
pays for it.
But they don't want to pay for it - they want to continue taking your money for nothing. They create any number of scenarios wherein they will not pay. I used to work in car insurance, and had to tell a woman whose car had died, leaving her with no way to get to her job, that there was nothing we could do because she hadn't been in a collision. Health insurance works the same way. Furthermore, in the case of those who cannot become insured due to pre-existing conditions, competition does nothing to help them. Deregulating insurance will do nothing to help those who already cannot obtain it.
So it doesn't matter how little you use your insurance, they will always charge you the same amount for it. Moreover, they have the power to change their rates simply because they want to. Here is the major difference, though, between insurance and any other service you might pay for. When insurance companies do pay out to other people, they recoup the losses by charging everybody else a little bit more. The smaller the pool, the more that ripple is felt.
Therefore, insurance which covers 300 million people is automatically 300 times as cost effective as a private insurer with a million customers.
Therefore, even if you had 2 private companies covering everyone in the country, it would still not be as efficient as the single payer option.Insurance is a
natural monopoly. This means that regardless of how well they work, it is impossible for two competing companies to provide service as well as one without competition. People will try to tell you that this is un-American, that it follows a socialist ideal, and that it will be bad for business and everyone will suffer. These people
do not know how insurance works. Either that, or they do
and are just lying to you. Either that, or they are simply following an ideological objection rather than a scientific one. There are some people who would rather pay more for the same service because they do not want government in control of health care. This is
purely ideological. It is the same thing as arguing religion.People who object to this theory will point to the fact that several times in history, utility companies have tried to convince the government that they are a natural monopoly. However, statistics prove that deregulation actually drives down costs significantly in the energy field. To those people, I say again, because I really have to drive this point home,
insurance does not operate like any other business in the world.Universal health coverage will only reduce what everybody pays. Do not believe the argument about increased costs. This really is a better deal than what we have.
2) Efficiency of CareLet me break down the costs of health insurance for you by country.
#1: United States (13.9% of Gross Domestic Product)
#2: Switzerland (10.9%)
#3: Germany (10.8%)
Those numbers indicate that the United States pays more for health insurance than any other country in the world, followed by Switzerland and Germany, respectively. The common trend here is that all 3 of these countries have privatized health coverage.
The spending on average by other countries with social health care is 7.2% of their GDP. These are countries with Gross Domestic Products
significantly less than the United States still spending
half of what we do percentage-wise.
Now, the claim many make when this point is raised is that they are receiving inferior coverage. Obviously, that is why so many Canadians cross the border into the United States to receive health care. Their long waits and rationed care make it easier for those with private health care to simply cross the border and get access to our fast, efficient coverage.
This claim is
completely wrong. In fact, studies on the issue prove that the level of health care the United States provides is
significantly less than that given by countries with socialized systems. The reason so many Canadians come over the border? Organ transplants. The overwhelming majority of expenditures by Canadians is on organ donations. Why do they come to the United States for these?
Because the United States's mortality rates amongst the younger population are incredibly higher than Canada's. They can't get the same access because their countrymen
are just too healthy.Furthermore, Switzerland has already put into place the kind of reforms that we are clamoring for here in America, and is still nearly
50% more expensive than the most expensive social system. When more people get coverage, coverage on average improves. There is absolutely
no mathematical data to refute this, and more than enough to support it.
To put it in more visible numbers - the United States, which pays more for health insurance than any other country and, along with Canada, makes up nearly half the world's pharmaceutical market,
still has the 9th highest cancer mortality rate in the world. Out of every 100,000 people in the United States, 321.9 die of cancer.
There have been studies published which point to the United States having higher survival rates than nearly any other country when it comes to breast, colon, prostate, or rectal cancer. The reality is that we have the highest survival rates because we have
more people getting cancer. More people getting cancer means that, especially when using data involving
the four most survivable forms of cancer, of course the United States will appear to have fantastic numbers. The truth is that no matter how good the numbers look, we are another world leader when it comes to cancer deaths.
The fact, mathematically provable, is that France has the best health care in the world. They pay more for universal health care than any other country,
but still 40% less than what we pay in the United States. They are more cost efficient, more health efficient, and charge people less. There is absolutely no evidence to support the theory that our quality of health care will suffer due to universal coverage. None. There is only conjecture and ideology. Every scrap of data proves that the opposite is true.
3) Health Care Rationing and "Death Panels"Another common claim is that, with more people insured, we will not have the supply to meet the demand. Thus the only way to provide for everybody will be to ration off health care. This has led to the belief that there will be "Death Panels" - people who get to decide who lives and who dies based on need for coverage.
I'm reasonably certain most educated people have abandoned this idea, but I still feel it needs to be addressed.
Death Panels already exist. If you have health insurance, you are already paying for them. Every day, doctors argue with insurance companies to actually shell out the money to pay for their customer's treatments. Every day, insurance company review boards plan out ways in which they can avoid having to pay anything. Your health care is
already rationed. This is a problem
now. The argument was put best for me in terms of buying a new car.
You decide to buy a new car. You're very excited.
A friend of yours says "Don't do that - you'll have to pay for insurance, maintenance, gas - it'll be horrible!"
You say "Oh wow, thanks! I'll just keep the car I have."
Do you see the problem here? Our current system has all of the same issues as the ones being espoused as reasons not to have universal coverage. People who cling to the theory that we can expect to have our lifespans controlled by the government apparently find it perfectly acceptable to have this done by private companies instead.
Being a doctor means that you are, at least half the time, on the phone with an insurance company asking why your patient isn't getting coverage. If nothing else, instituting a universal, single-payer system means that doctors will have more time to treat patients. The myth that care will have to be rationed out is exactly that - a myth. Your insurers are doing this to you right now and expecting you to look the other way because they know you will support universal health care if you stop to think about it.
Speaking of time with the doctor, another common point is that there are absurdly long waits in emergency rooms for countries with social systems. It's not uncommon to wait 4 or 5 hours, or longer, awaiting attention for even the worst injuries or ailments. Of course, when people make this argument, they ignore that
the same thing happens here. Countries with social health care are not unique in this - sometimes there are more people than a hospital can accommodate at once. This has to do with the doctor to patient ratio, not health insurance involved. Although, as stated above, if there wasn't so much time spent arguing with health insurance companies, that would very likely result in at least a marginal overall improvement in the amount of time doctors could be with patients.
At this point, if you're following along, you have to be asking yourself, "well, why would politicians not support something which is so obviously good for the country?"
Easy. There is a Democratic President in office and Republicans want to make sure that doesn't happen again in 2012. They don't care if you have health care or not, they want to take a stand against a system because they know if it is implemented that it will work. When that happens, it all but guarantees a second term for Barack Obama. They will say anything to prevent this from happening. It is no mistake that the legislators against health care are overwhelmingly Republican. This is not a matter of "conservative" versus "liberal." This is purely political, and the American public is going to suffer for it if we let it happen.
"But what about Democrats who don't support universal health care?"
I'm glad you asked. Let's look at the recent Senate Finance Committee vote which shut down the hope of a public option.
All 10 Republicans on the committee voted against having a public option. 5 Democrats also voted against it, bringing the count to 15-8 against. Those 5 Democrats were Max Baucas (MT), Blanch Lincoln (AK), Bill Nelson (FL), Kent Conrad (ND), and Tom Carper (DE).
Notice anything about those Senators? With the exception of Tom Carper
, they are all Democratic Senators from states with a majority of Republican voters. I shouldn't have to draw you a map here.
On this I'm digressing from why health care should be socialized, so let's move on to the next point.
4) Paying for NothingProponents of private insurance insist that with our current system, people only pay for the coverage they want. Socializing medicine means that we'll all be paying for everybody. We don't want to pay for everybody, they say. If someone can't get a job to pay for their own insurance, or has a pre-existing condition not covered, then that's their problem. It's hard enough taking care of yourself, you shouldn't have to worry about everybody else.
Ignoring all the proof that social medicine
reduces costs for everybody, we could hope people would at least care a little more about looking out for the less fortunate. But even being as greedy as possible, universal health care is still smarter.
The ballpark figure of uninsured in America is 50,000,000 people. This means that if nothing else changes, if instituting universal health care is the only thing that happens and all other current systems remain in place, we can expect a 16.7% increase in our costs. Leaving alone the fact that this is still a 100% increase in the quality of care for 50,000,000 people, let's examine why this is simply incorrect on the whole.
We have already established that as coverage range increases, so does the quality of coverage. The numbers from other nations don't lie. Now, let's think about what happens currently to disprove that 16.7% with some hard examples.
The "250,000,000 already insured" that opponents of the universal system like to throw around ignores a basic fact. As many as 25,000,000 and likely much more of that number are
underinsured. This presents the same basic problem as those with no insurance at all. Rising costs have led to people simply not being able to afford even employer-based health coverage. Even though they are listed as insured on surveys, they still do not have the coverage necessary to provide for them when they need it.
What does this mean for you? Well, when hospitals have to provide care for someone who can't pay for it, they often just list it as bad debt. That bad debt does not simply disappear. It gets written off and paid for by charities, the government, or passed on into what the medical industry charges private insurers. The money has to come from somewhere, but in every case
it still comes from you. Do not be fooled by the claims of paying for people who can't afford their coverage -
you are doing this right now. You might not see it, but every time your health insurance premium rises for no reason, or there's a budget shortfall and your local school doesn't get a big enough grant, you can bet that somewhere in the reason are the uninsured and underinsured of America.
Covering everybody will
only make it cheaper. Right now these people avoid the doctor as much as they can because they don't have insurance. Ultimately, they end up in the hospital anyway, with a disease or injury far more progressed than it would be otherwise. This means treatment takes longer, costs more, and may perhaps do less. If that patient dies? Their bill does not disappear. You pay for it. You are paying for it now whether we have social health care or not. If that person did not have to worry about insurance, they may have gone when their illness was still treatable, reducing the costs involved for everybody.
Don't let greed or indifference blind you to the obvious.
There is no financial reason not to have universal health care. As I stated earlier, the only serious objection someone can raise to universal health care is that they do not want the government controlling the industry. This, again, is an
ideological problem, not one based in fact. And in this case, the ideology is going to end up being more expensive for the entire country. I am not here posing a moral argument for universal health care or espousing my overwhelming support for our President or his administration. I am presenting the facts, unadulterated, which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt a universal system is superior to a privatized one. Calls of "socialism," "Death panels," ad infinitum, are red herrings meant to distract voters from something proposed
for our benefit and for our own good being turned into a purely political issue.
These facts were presented to me in roughly the same form I now give them to you. I entered a debate on the side of keeping health insurance private, but my arguments simply could not stand up to the overwhelming tide of contrary evidence I was assailed with. Once I did the research proving the opposition's claims were true, my prior objections seemed nothing short of plain silly.
So now I turn to you. There has never been a time in the span of my life where health care was more prominent an issue and the reality of universal health coverage closer to us. This is where we must band together as a nation - put aside labels of political affiliation and realize that
this really is the right thing to do. Your Senators, your Governors and Congressmen, your elected representatives of all office, they will listen to you if you speak loudly enough. Enough voices acting as one can accomplish anything, and it is high time they began acting to accomplish the
right things.
I urge you, call your legislators. Send them letters. If necessary, rally so that they can see your numbers. We see news programs all the time showing footage of people banding together in large groups only to display their own ignorance or petty wants. This is something which is legitimately good for everybody. It is right for all of us. We can take this moment to educate ourselves and fight for something positive for us, our children, and our grandchildren. All we have to do is become active on this one thing and we can ensure a real, lasting, positive change.
Thank you, and God bless.
Sources:
Health Care for all Colorado What is a Natural Monopoly?NCHC: Facts About Healthcare - Health Insurance Costs
Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much?Snapshots: Health Care Spending in the United States and OECD CountriesWHO Statistical Information SystemBusiness Roundtable Health Care Value Comparability StudyNewsweek: We Already Have Health-Care Rationing"Rationing" Health Care: What Does It Mean?NCHC - Facts About Healthcare - Health CoverageCNN Money - "Underinsured" Americans may raise all health care costsHow Many Are Underinsured? Trends Among U.S. Adults, 2003 and 2007Why I Answered Ozkirbas's Question The Way I Did
I don't know if I invested this when it came into my head after seeing Future of the Left, but I'd like to think I've come up with a decent term for the avoidance of an encore when performing live - the noncore. Future of the Left (and mclusky before them) have mastered the noncore, i.e. playing the last song of the set in a way to preclude the possibility of playing an encore. During their last tune, they proceeded to disassemble the drum kit, and break most of the strings on Falco's guitar for good measure. It demonstrated quite clearly that no more music would be played for the evening.
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