Maintaining Our For-Profit Health Care System

For months now, the “debate” on health care has stirred up fears amongst both sides of the largest ideologies. Those who want a public option or at the very least, real reform of our health care system, are worried over the possibility of change not taking location. Those who claim to like the current system the way it is, fear the word socialism and the chance that it may find its way into our health care. Some are even so blinded by fears of socialized medicine that they shriek, “Keep your hands off my medicare” toward representatives at town meetings, unaware that their medicare, which they rightfully appreciate, is a social program and has been for over 40 years.

The clearest answer as to why these fears are so pervasive is simple yet, nothing new, and the fears become the mechanism that keep reform from occurring. Propagandists have touted socialized-medicine-fear-mongering since Harry Truman first tried to establish a national insurance program for adequate health-care for all, but the American Medical Association, joined by conservative Republicans and Democratic sympathizers, called the progam “Socialistic.” Opponents continued this offense through the failure of Hillary Clinton’s push for reform in the mid-90’s. The goal of ‘The Task Force on National Health Care Reform’ was to provide universal health-care for all Americans. Propagandists and Republican opponents of the reform maligned it as heavily bureaucratic, and dismissive of patient choice, but a republican’s view of patient choice is tantamount to a citizen deciding if, or if not to go to their doctor or hospital. Our system today is devoid of patient choice, even doctor choice. HMO’s are the decision makers, not the doctors and patients. A single payer health care system would remove this sinister, profit-motivated routine from the picture. Everyone would be in, and nobody would be out.

Our current president, Barack Obama, was originally involved in transcending our for-profit system into a single payer. In 2003, while speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, Obama stated “I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to examine. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take befriend the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” Well, the Democrats have taken back the White House, but Barack’s position has been modified.

Since the debate over health care reform has begun (once again), the issue of ‘why not single payer? ‘ has come up, and Obama’s space has been to lay out his belief in a single payer health care system from the foundation of a nation. If we “were just starting from scratch,” single payer would be the right idea. The end result is a president, who once believed and stood for a single payer system, now laboring under the delusion that the single payer system would be “too disruptive.” He has elaborated on the concept by stating, “A lot of people who currently have employer based health care would earn themselves dropped and they would have to go into an entirely modern system that has not been set up yet. I would be concerned about the potential disruptiveness of that kind of transition.” One would think, logically, that a real misfortune would be the amount of jobs that would be lost by putting companies like Aetna, UnitedHealth, and other insurance giants out of business. Personally, I’m all for it. I do not see the pragmatism in keeping useless, self-serving industries alive while thousands die every year, and millions suffer, day after day, without adequate health care.

Real reform demands radicalism, otherwhise, the proponents of repression are given more than enough time to shift gears and near out on top. Furthermore, “radicalism” does not necessarily translate to “irresponsibility.” Responsibly, the removal of for-profit companies from our hair would be a packaged deal with robust unemployment compensation for all workers, job-training, and of course, single payer health care. How is this “disruptive,” when we have an insurance industry that is the direct cause of some 20,000 deaths a year, 50% of all bankruptcies, and is costing us billions more than comprehensive health care needs to? People are scrambling to fabricate ends meet as insurance premiums continue to increase. Bureacracy is rampant in our current system because of the decisions surrounding whose claim is covered and whose is rejected, and we’re afraid to cover everyone through one provider (the federal government, in other words, us), because of fear mongering that leads us to believe that the only alternative is a socialized alternative that precludes patient choice. The debate, or pseudo-debate, is what’s really disruptive. It is disruptive of progress.

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