by Paul Smith
Everyone knows healthcare in America is a bloated, chaotic, diseased nightmare in dire need of massive overhaul and reform. We have almost 50 million without insurance, and millions of those with insurance are constantly dropped or denied coverage for absurd reasons like “preexisting conditions” (as though life itself was not a preexisting condition worthy enough for proper healthcare).
America spends about $2.5 trillion on healthcare every year (two and half times as much per person as most developed nations), and ranks near the bottom of all industrialized countries when looking at infant mortality, life expectancy and immunization rates.
The state of healthcare in this country is sickening. And now President Obama and Congress have their stethoscopes set to find a proper cure for our ailing system.
Unfortunately, this is America, and we don’t cure anything here; rather, we prefer to find treatments that make the present conditions tenable – and profitable. And so it is with healthcare reform.
Obama laid the groundwork for what his administration would like to see in a healthcare bill and then Congress quickly got to work botching the job as usual.
My tentative prediction is that, after the congressional recess, some kind of healthcare reform bill will eventually pass – that is, if the bills in the House and Senate ever make it out of the committees holding them up.
And I think if it does pass, some good things will no doubt be accomplished: ten of millions currently without coverage will get access to basic health insurance, and insurance companies will see some regulation making it more difficult for them to deny or drop coverage for those who need it.
Yet these reforms do far too little to overhaul this failing system, like trying to save the Titanic with a roll of duct-tape.
There has been much talk of a so-called “public option,” a government-run insurance plan, like Medicare, that millions of Americans could access which would also compete with the private insurance companies and negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies to bring overall prices down.
But mark my words: there will be no public option such as this if this bill ever passes. It’s a pipedream; it’s not going to happen.
Why won’t it happen? It’s for the same reason this healthcare bill stinks: America is the only country in the world that treats people’s lives as a market commodity.
No other nation lets the marketplace dictate their healthcare system, but that is exactly what we do in America. We treat healthcare not as a social service, but as a money-making endeavor.
We distribute care not according to those who need it most (those coughing up a lung), but to those with the most ability to pay (those coughing up the money).
The healthcare industry is a business, and their main goal, like every other business, is profit maximization.
And that’s exactly why many in the healthcare industry are actually supporting this potential bill by Congress, because contained in this reform are government mandates that will require people to purchase health insurance or face being fined.
That means people will be legally obligated to obtain health insurance, which, in turn, means millions of new customers for the private health insurance companies. And that would be acceptable – if there was also a public option.
The healthcare industry has more lobbyists by far in Washington than any other group, and the industry is bitterly opposed to a public option. They do not want to compete with a cheaper, more efficient, government-run health insurance program because that would force them to have to lower their premiums and reduce their overhead costs.
And guess which congressmen are the ones most opposed to a public option? If you guessed the ones who have received the most money from the healthcare industry then you get a lollipop.
The only real solution to the healthcare problem in this country is to start slowly dismantling the current system from the outside in.
I’m not suggesting we outlaw private insurance companies altogether and nationalize the entire industry, but I am suggesting we begin to make the ubiquitous presence of private health insurance unnecessary.
And the only way to do that would be a public option – a massive non-profit Medicare-like government-run health insurance program that would not just compete with the private insurance companies, but would dramatically undercut the competition.
If we can trust the government to run the post office and the military, then we can trust them to run part of the health insurance industry.
They already do a completely acceptable job with Medicare. If you don’t believe me, ask someone on Medicare if they would like to have their service replaced with a private insurance plan (by the way, the overhead costs for Medicare are around 3 percent while the average overhead costs for private insurance companies is about 30 percent).
And I would like to remind everyone that it is being called a public “option” for a reason, because it would be just that – an option. While there will be mandates for people to have health insurance, you would have the option of choosing the government plan or a private plan.
This idea that the government will take over the healthcare industry altogether and begin making important medical decisions for American families is an absolute paranoid absurdity. Even if a massive public plan goes into place, you will always have the option in this country to choose private doctors and private insurance.
So, I hope I’m wrong and that Congress will actually include some sort of reasonable public option in this healthcare reform package, but I have my serious doubts. It looks like all we’re willing to do with our appalling healthcare system is trim off a little of the fat, while also pumping more money and more people into the status quo.
And until we stop viewing people’s lives as just another product in the market place, we will be fated with a diseased healthcare system befitting of such a sickening concept.