Universal health care’s time has come

By E. Michael Ervin
Grand Junction CO, Colorado
June 12, 2007

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    Regardless of the harangues of many ultra conservatives and libertarians, universal health care is coming to America. The problems with our current system are now so great and financially ruinous that it’s no longer a question of “whether” universal health care is necessary to the future well-being of our nation, but simply “when” and in “what form” such a system will emerge.

    Insecurity about our health is higher than ever before. We live in a time when thousands of people lose their health insurance every day, where health care has become more and more elusive — even to the well-to-do — and millions are just one pink slip away from becoming uninsured.

    It’s become crystal clear to all but the most uninformed, uncaring and ideologically retarded that health care for all isn’t just important to achieve, but imperative.
When we cut through all the clutter, the lack of health care for all Americans is fundamentally a moral issue. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have some form of universal health care (defined as a basic guarantee of health care for all its citizens).

    While virtually all other countries in the civilized world have declared health care to be a basic right, we treat it as a privilege — only available to those who can afford it. In this sense, health care in America is treated as an economic good, not as a social or public good.

    Having determined that health care is a right of citizenship, most societies have concluded that health problems beyond an individual’s control — diabetes, congenital birth defects, being hit by a drunk driver, etc. — should be insured by the community’s pooling of resources (not unlike the collective responsibility civilized societies assume for allaying the costs of natural disasters like hurricanes and floods).

    According to Alex Gerber, clinical professor of surgery at the University of Southern California: “Under our anachronistic system, many health insurers are more interested in the bottom line than in the public’s health. The obvious way to increase profits is to decrease benefits by excluding poor health risks from insurance programs. This adverse selection of ‘cherry picking’ plus the 10 percent to 30 percent overhead of marketing, advertising, stockholder dividends and huge executive salaries — none of which cures a single patient — is largely responsible for health care costs that have ‘broken’ our health care system.”

    We purport to believe in “equal opportunity,” yet those who do not have health insurance are at risk for financial ruin and poorer health, both of which disadvantage them in society and thereby do not give them equal opportunity. Education is guaranteed in our country in part to further the ideal of equal opportunity, but health care is not treated in the same way.

    The Declaration of Independence states there are certain “inalienable rights,” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If we believe in an inalienable right to life, how can we tolerate a system that denies people lifesaving medications and treatments? Similarly, if we believe in an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, how can we allow millions of dreams to be smashed by the financial and physical consequences of not having health insurance?

    Finally, an American value that’s not clearly specific, but one that is certainly held, is “economic efficiency” (getting good value for our money). The United States spends almost twice as much per capita on health care on average than other countries do. Yet, our health-care system suffers from rampant lack of coverage, sub-par life expectancy and infant mortality rates, and uneven performance on quality.

    We don’t need more money for health care, we need more health care for our money, and that means moving to a universal system as quickly as possible.

    Reach E. Michael Ervin at emecolo1@hotmail.com.