UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: THE LIFE SAVED MAY BE YOUR OWN
By HHR | May 6th, 2009 | Category: General | 4 commentsBy Cleo Brown
My brother Lance died in August of 2008. He was only forty-five years old. Although he was a Diabetic with a failing heart he did not have Health Insurance. The consequence of not having Health Insurance for Lance was that his basic need to remain healthy was not met. Eventually, therefore, after living in Phoenix, Arizona for two-and-a-half years without the benefit of appropriate medical care he dropped dead of a heart-attack one month shy of his forty-sixth birthday.
The issue of health care for me, therefore, has become a common sense matter which transcends party lines and affiliations. It does not matter if you are a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or one of the other scores of political parties which now exist in The United States. A policy of Universal Health Care and Coverage for all citizens should be implemented and maintained for it is the responsibility of all governments to make sure that all of the basic needs of its citizens are being met.
On the opposite side of The Universal Health Care Coin are those people who do not support the implementation of a National Health Care Plan for our Nation’s Citizens. These “nay-sayers” maintain that Universal Health Coverage is Un-American because it is contrary to Democracy and is the hallmark of a Socialist Nation (socialized medicine). Similarly, there are those people who argue that Healthcare is the responsibility of the individual. These same people say that individuals, such as my brother Lance, are lazy, free-loaders looking for a Government hand-out. There is also the argument which states that a Universal Health Care Plan will tax Americans; Consequently taking hard-earned money out of the tax-payer’s pockets to pay for the costs of Universal Health Care.
The list of extremely weak, survival-of-the-fittest, pre-Progressive Era arguments continue:
Governments should not be involved in health care.
Health care is not a right.
Universal Healthcare is “Big Government”.
Universal Healthcare will create abuse with-in the health care profession.
Universal Healthcare will restrict our right to choose the physician of our choice.
And, finally, there are those people who do not support Universal Health Care because they claim that Doctors do not approve of and support Universal Health Care and Coverage.
To those people, therefore, who do not support Universal Health Care and Coverage as a basic need of man to survive and, ultimately, as a right of man and ,consequently, as a responsibility of Government, let me say that in a new study by Reuters, of more than two-thousand Doctors surveyed, over fifty-nine percent said that they now support the adoption by Government of a National Health Insurance Program. This is in contrast to a 2002 survey in which only forty-nine percent of Doctors supported the implementation of a National Health Care Program.
Similarly, although a Government-Subsidized Universal Health Care Program would take tax-dollars out of the pockets of hard-working United States Citizens, the tax dollars contributed would be absorbed into the lower costs of paying for both Health Care and Insurance Premiums. It has been noted that the costs of medical care are more expensive for people who are not regularly seen by a Physician. Combine this fact with the fact that many working people simply cannot afford the cost of Insurance! Also, twenty-four percent of the uninsured people of the United States are without Insurance because they have lost their jobs(Health Care Issues).There are currently over forty-seven million people in The United States without Health Insurance while forty million of this number are unable to access medical care when they need it (Health Care Issues). It does become clear that a Universal Government Subsidized Health Care Plan, including Insurance Coverage, would ultimately reduce costs for individual Americans.
Other features of a National Health Insurance Plan would include more control by Government over Physician Professional Codes-of-Ethics, and more government regulation of the Insurance Companies as well as the prices Insurance Companies charge for Insurance Premiums. In addition to this, there is the possibility that crime, as in England; The Netherlands; Germany; and France may decrease because substance abusers who are chemically dependant upon illegal street drugs for their survival may be able to obtain their daily drugs legally from a hospital or a medical clinic. These chemically-dependant people, therefore, who would otherwise spend their time devising ways to get the drug will be able to obtain their daily drugs legally from a hospital or a medical clinic. These people, therefore, who would otherwise spend their time devising ways to get the drug, will be able to seek and keep meaningful employment and not resort to a life of crime. This would also put illegal drug-traffickers (pushers and smugglers) out of business.
Finally, I would say to you in closing that Healthcare is the responsibility of a humane and caring government, which is concerned about meeting the basic needs of all of its citizens. According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia, The United States is the only wealthy industrialized Nation to fail to provide its citizens with National Health Insurance or Universal Health Care.
Consequently, Universal Health Care and Insurance is a right which all people in all advanced Nations should expect from its Government. Although the size of Government may expand to some degree, the health protected and, consequently, the lives saved as a result of this Government expansion are well worth the innovation. My brother’s life could have been spared if The United States had in place A Universal Health Care Plan. Similarly, Heidi Evans of The New York Daily News writes of the struggle of working people whose health dissipated because they were unable to afford to pay for the rising costs of medical care. A National Government Subsidized Health Care Program, therefore, is long overdue.
Cleo Brown is a moderate Republican who works as an Instructor and as The Dean of Student Affairs in a GED Preparation Program in Chelsea. Cleo has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis and has done work on a Ph.D. in Education at The University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California. Cleo has also published several poems and is a featured artists in The International Poetry Library’s Who’s Who in Poetry.
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I respectfully disagree.
If government ran healthcare worked any where else in the world, I would consider supporting it. However, it has not. If the state ran the healthcare system, bureaucrats would decide who gets treated and by what means they get treated, not the doctors. In France, for example, the older a citizen gets, the less coverage they apply. According to the government an older person has less life to live and is therefore less human.
The advancement of medicine and health quality would also be negatively affected by government health care. It does not take a genius to realize that the United States is behind every major medical breakthrough with few exceptions. In free society, individual subjectivity of a value of an object is bided against a producers desire to sell a project at the highest value. If the individual is not allowed to decide on what he or she buys, the price system is lost. If the price system is lost, there is no way to advance productivity because it is impossible to determine what is demanded. The government ruins this. After this complicated hard to understand economic rant, basically the important thing to know is that government will kill all innovation in improving medicine.
So lets say it is impossible for an well meaning government to run a healthcare system, I don’t think it is, but lets assume it is: Yes, your brother might of received adequate care and be alive today, but in 100 years our medical system would only be slightly better than it is today. Millions of people in the future would die from diseases that had not been cured, potentially cancer, Aids, and so on. It isn’t a good trade off, I understand that, but its true.
It is also important that understand the government has been directing the health industry for a while now. The FDA basically decides on what medicines they want created. High cost are all due to the government monopolizing the industry. For example, there was a doctor shut down in New York for wanting to charge his patrons just a monthly flat rate for coverage!!! He tried to take the government paperwork and the insurance out of the equation, but was not allowed.
Until we decentralize the health industry as it is, I the solution lies in private individuals. For example Dr. Honeycutt posted an article today on work she has done at the free Good Shepards Clinic in Morrow Georgia. Private citizens working to enact real health benefits for the community. http://honeycuttspeaks.com/2009/05/06/live-for-less-free-clinic/
Ben
I find this essay well developed and with ideas supported by research. And I am not biased toward or against Government sponsored health care. But I find misleading to some degree the whole argument of “to be or not to be” Universal.
From what I have seen during my numerous years spent in Eastern and Western Europe and in N. America, there is not a single country without the health care system being in crisis, not a single. Of course the healthcare Industry is a huge business for whoever runs it — whether for financial profit or political (the later leading to financial gains consequently.) The difference here is that the former is more sincere by admitting and approaching the Industry for profit, while the politically motivated guys a hiding behind morals.
Similarly, this essay cites some “pre-Progressive Era arguments” as untrue, but fails of showing why they are untrue. And while it mentions a survey that finds out that doctors are willing to work with a National Health Insurance Program, it is quite hard to me to believe these findings. It seems to me that as in all other industries, if doctors become government workers, they will have to accept working for much lower salaries. If you look at any of the governmental Health Care industries in W. Europe, you’ll see that highly qualified doctors are paid about 1/5 of similarly qualified US doctors. My hats down to the US doctors if they accept to provide the current US quality of care for the European salary.
And finally, I cannot but remember the cases in Europe when someone from my family needed timely specialized exams, tests, or care. We always had to pay some private clinic. The most rampant case was when my pregnant wife needed an urgent exam to find out about possible damage to the one-month old baby. The Universal healthcare system made an appointment for her 90 days from the doctor’s request.
I hope you understand the consequences of what you want?
So, we need to decide if we should settle for expensive and mediocre health care for all, in place for expensive and effective health care for most along with free, basic care for some. To stop the misleading talk, we should stop assuming that government run health care means free and of good quality, nor insist that government can prevent waste (unless someone points to a successful government run business.)
Until this happens, we should keep it real by debating the choice between common sense and morals.
Cleo,
I am sorry for your borhter’s loss, but consider this. Because healthcare is a profit driven private industry in America, it is the most innovative in the world without question. If there was no profit motive, there would’ve been no incentive to fund the R&D that discovered the treatment that could’ve very well saved your brother’s life. Why is it that so much more innovation comes from the efforts of American institutions and why is it that so many other nations(that have gov run healthcare) send there best and brightest here to be trained in medicine? We did not become a great nation by doing what the rest of the world does. I agree that changes need to be made to our current system to make it more inclusive and accessible, but unfortunately the solution does not reside on capitol hill. It resides in the private marketplace.
I am sorry for your borhter’s loss, but this is life and its a part of your life.