I was pleased to see president Obama deliver this address yesterday:
I was even more pleased because he has gathered the traditional opponents of healthcare reform around him and has convinced them to commit to reform in the US system. This is a positive sign. However, I’m concerned because, as with all political debates that challenge a dominant ideology – in this case free-market fundamentalism – we will soon see the denialists come out of the woodwork to disparage any attempt at achieving reforms that may result in universal health care coverage. This has, in fact, already begun, and typical of the tactics they selectively mention the British NHS. If you care to read a balanced article on the history and function of the NHS, you’ll probably agree it is wrongly demonized. What you will also see is that the denialists will ignore a few key facts which include:
1. The United States is the last industrialized nation that lacks a universal healthcare system. Once again, thanks to obstructive policies led by the free market fundamentalists, the US is trailing the rest of the world.
2. The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any other nation in the world.
3. Despite spending more, we get less. We have tens of millions who are uncovered – which does not mean they do not receive healthcare at all. They instead are treated in ERs, urgent care centers, or receive substandard care, and the state ends up picking up the bill anyway. So even without a planned universal health care system, you end up picking up the (higher) bill because the state has a vested interest in protecting hospitals from the economic collapse that would occur if they had to pick up the tab on every impoverished patient who doctors are ethically and legally obligated to treat.
4. Many national healthcare systems work. We will not hear about this from the ideologues who will soon harangue us with cherry-picked horror stories of long wait times and underfunded hospitals. You will likely not hear about Sweden or Italy or France, and I promise you will never hear them talk about Australia. For them to do so would be to admit to defeat of their fundamental premise that universal health care can not work.
5. Failures of national health systems are not related to universality but instead are due to chronic underfunding by government. If the British spent as much per capita as we did, they wouldn’t have the shortfalls in manpower and beds that they do.
We will of course hear a lot of chest thumping from the thick-browed morons about how the US is already perfect and can not learn anything from the rest of the world. We will hear how every other system in the world is imperfect, and that is why any reform is impossible. We will hear how this will lead to communism and socialism despite the fact that every other industrialized nation in the world has universal healthcare and amazingly they didn’t all go commy. In short, we are about to hear a bunch of denialist garbage designed to delay, to obstruct, to block, and drag down any meaningful action in healthcare.
But before that happens, let’s have a more balanced discussion on what a universal healthcare system could look like in the US.
Any discussion of changes in the US medical system must begin with a statement of principles guiding reforms in the system. Let’s start with some of the principles I would include, and I think most of us could agree on:
Continue reading “What should a national health care system look like?”
