A Political Glimpse from Ireland

Basic Care

Today, I continued to listen to Eric Alterman’s audiobook entitled: “Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America.” I am no where near finished but it is by far the best book I have read this year, I am actually shocked at some of the facts he speaks of in his book and no longer look at the American political biosphere as fair but rather skewed towards the conservatives. This may conflict with some of my earlier statements but I cannot fault Mr. Alterman’s argument hence I have changed my position. This is not the point of my post today as I wish to once more make a push for Universal Healthcare in America given the current campaign:

WASHINGTON, July 8 (Reuters) - A coalition of unions, think tanks and other groups launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday saying they want to ensure that health-care reform tops the U.S. political agenda after the November elections.

I wrote about a good friend of mine in an earlier post whose family opts to pay the fine in Massachusetts because the cost of healthcare is so expensive. The GOP and the Republican party do not offer a solution to people like this but would rather sit back and block resolutions that could effectively help 47 million Americans. They throw around excuses that the Government is inefficient, people waiting for important surgeries and the cost. What really sparked my continued thought and research on the concept of Universal Healthcare for every American was this op-ed post in the Detroit Free Press:

McCain intends to push for cost containment when it comes to the health care issue, a strategy that’s much more plausible than Obama’s hopes for universal health care. While many people think it would be better if all Americans were covered under a national health care program, the reality is that we would be better off setting up appointments and paying more money for the help we need. If we had a national health care plan, there would be longer waits for transplants and other surgeries, and less of an opportunity for people to take care of what they need medically in a timely manner.

The idea of universal health care sounds like a great concept, but Obama fails to realize that life is not a fairy tale.

The author of this post has clearly not done the relevant research into the various Universal Healthcare systems around the world. A question she might ask herself is why is America the one of the few nations in the West without a Universal Healthcare system? Why do 47 million people not have health insurance yet no one wants to do anything about it? The cynical answer is that the healthcare industry of which I was apart of at one point, loves to shower money on the Republican’s so that they keep knocking down any legislation with the hopes of helping the people who cannot afford to pay for health insurance.

The only case I am going to argue today is the moral case because America to me is about equality and things are not equal at the moment, from the American Medical Student Association:

The consequences of America’s decision to treat health care as a privilege extend far past the uninsured. With employers dropping health insurance at a record pace, more and more middle class Americans are at risk of uninsurance. Those who work for companies that continue to offer health insurance find themselves paying a higher share of health care costs than they did previously.1 Finally, employees are finding their wage increases to be smaller and smaller as the cost of providing health insurance skyrockets for employers.

The most direct way in which the insured are affected by the lack of universal health care is illustrated by a 2005 study that surveyed people who filed for personal bankruptcy. In this study, 46.2% of those surveyed cited a medical cause for their bankruptcy. Of note, only 32.6% of those citing a medical cause of bankruptcy were uninsured at the time of filing, meaning that almost 7 out of 10 people in the survey were insured when they filed.7 In other words, high medical bills and lost income due to illness can lead to bankruptcy even for the insured. A society that believes that people should pay a lot of money for the privilege of having health care is a society in which only the extraordinarily rich are truly immune to the threat of medical bankruptcy.

The only point I want to make personally is that every single American deserves access to basic care regardless of wait times for surgeries, costs, and inefficiencies. People should have the option in the current financial climate to be able to rely on the government to prevent themselves from going bankrupt paying for healthcare. This will not happen with the current administration but hopefully in 2009, the politicians in Washington will finally pull through for the American people and enact the comprehensive healthcare reform that has been so needed in the last decade.