Are people entitled to free healthcare?

Matt Cotter

Healthcare

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/health-care-is-a-right-no_b_212770.html

Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege

At $2.4 trillion dollars, and 18 percent of our GDP, the skyrocketing cost of health care in this country is unsustainable both from a personal and macro-economic perspective.

07/09/2009 05:12 am ET Updated Dec 06, 2017

Let’s be clear. Our health care system is disintegrating. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home, more than 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses because they do not get to the doctor when they should. This is six times the number who died at the tragedy of 9/11 - but this occurs every year.

In the midst of this horrendous lack of coverage, the U.S. spends far more per capita on health care than any other nation - and health care costs continue to soar. At $2.4 trillion dollars, and 18 percent of our GDP, the skyrocketing cost of health care in this country is unsustainable both from a personal and macro-economic perspective.

At the individual level, the average American spends about $7,900 per year on health care. Despite that huge outlay, a recent study found that medical problems contributed to 62 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007. From a business perspective, General Motors spends more on health care per automobile than on steel while small business owners are forced to divert hard-earned profits into health coverage for their employees - rather than new business investments. And, because of rising costs, many businesses are cutting back drastically on their level of health care coverage or are doing away with it entirely.

Further, despite the fact that we spend almost twice as much per person on health care as any other country, our health care outcomes lag behind many other nations. We get poor value for what we spend. According to the World Health Organization the United States ranks 37th in terms of health system performance and we are far behind many other countries in terms of such important indices as infant mortality, life expectancy and preventable deaths.

As the health care debate heats up in Washington, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions. First, should all Americans be entitled to health care as a right and not a privilege - which is the way every other major country treats health care and the way we respond to such other basic needs as education, police and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality health care to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way possible?

I think the answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans do believe that all of us should have health care coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way. In that regard, I think the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly-funded, single-payer Medicare for All approach.

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Its function is not to provide quality health care for all, but to make huge profits for those who own the companies. With thousands of different health benefit programs designed to maximize profits, private health insurance companies spend an incredible (30 percent) of each health care dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions. Public programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are administered for far less.

In recent years, while we have experienced an acute shortage of primary health care doctors as well as nurses and dentists, we are paying for a huge increase in health care bureaucrats and bill collectors. Over the last three decades, the number of administrative personnel has grown by 25 times the numbers of physicians. Not surprisingly, while health care costs are soaring, so are the profits of private health insurance companies. From 2003 to 2007, the combined profits of the nation’s major health insurance companies increased by 170 percent. And, while more and more Americans are losing their jobs and health insurance, the top executives in the industry are receiving lavish compensation packages. It’s not just William McGuire, the former head of United Health, who several years ago accumulated stock options worth an estimated $1.6 billion or Cigna CEO Edward Hanway who made more than $120 million in the last five years. The reality is that CEO compensation for the top seven health insurance companies now averages $14.2 million.

Moving toward a national health insurance program which provides cost-effective universal, comprehensive and quality health care for all will not be easy. The powerful special interests - the insurance companies, drug companies and medical equipment suppliers - will wage an all-out fight to make sure that we maintain the current system which enables them to make billions of dollars. In recent years they have spent hundreds of millions on lobbying, campaign contributions and advertising and, with unlimited resources, they will continue spending as much as they need.

But, at the end of the day, as difficult as it may be, the fight for a national health care program will prevail. Like the civil rights movement, the struggle for women’s rights and other grass-roots efforts, justice in this country is often delayed - but it will not be denied. We shall overcome!

https://truthout.org/articles/why-the-us-should-have-universal-healthcare/

Why the US Should Have Universal Health Care

BY

Nicholas Conley,

Medium

PUBLISHED

December 14, 2016

In the United States, healthcare has been one of the biggest political battles of the decade. As a healthcare worker myself, it’s an issue that strikes close to home. My years of experience caring for people with dementia, traumatic brain injuries, tetraplegia, cancer, and more has given me a firsthand look into what our healthcare system is like at the ground level, and it’s a different world from the vague concepts that politicians volley back and forth at each other.

Healthcare shouldn’t be a messy political fight to begin with: it’s an issue of basic human rights. And what all too often gets lost in these scuffles are the people most in need.

Our police forces, fire departments, libraries, and even our military are all socialist institutions. Few people would argue for the idea of a private fire department that refuses to rescue people from their home because the fire itself is a “pre-existing condition.” So why would we ever frame the issue of healthcare differently, when it’s exactly the same thing?

I’ve watched patients die from preventable conditions because they couldn’t afford treatment. In nursing homes, sick people are warehoused into less-than-adequate conditions, with families forced to pay yearly costs of $90,000 a year to put their loved one in a shared room where they and the 30+ other patients on their unit will be taken care of by only two aides. Because of money issues, people lose limbs that they shouldn’t need to lose. Patients decline when they shouldn’t have to. An increasing number of people don’t go to the doctor, even when they develop terrifying symptoms such as mysterious lumps in their throat, because they just can’t afford it.

Something has to change. Looking at other countries, the practical solution is universal healthcare  —  preferably a single-payer system.

Though some politicians might argue differently, universal healthcare isn’t a radical idea. The majority of Americans actually support the concept. In the rest of the developed world it isn’t even an argument, it’s a given. Of the 25 wealthiest nations in the world, the United States is the only one that doesn’t have it. The majority of these countries use single-payer. Even countries like the Netherlands  —  with its “managed chaos” form of healthcare  —  are still universal.

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The United States has the highest health expenditure per capita of any country. With all that money being spent, you’d figure that we’re all super-healthy  —  but not really.

In the latest survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which assessed 13 developed nations including Norway, Australia, and the U.K., the USA had the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of infant mortality, and scarily high rates of heart disease and amputation as a result of diabetes. Of all the developed countries in the world, the United States possesses the dubious distinction of having both the most expensive healthcare system in the world  —  and the least effective.

In the past year, taxpayers in the United States picked up 65% of this country’s total healthcare coverage, about $2.1 trillion in taxes. Keep in mind, this is what we’re already paying in taxes. On top of that, let’s take into account how much money each of us also spends on our private healthcare plans every month, combined with how much we have to pay on personal procedures that aren’t totally covered by that plan.

But then Canada, which has a single-payer system, pays almost the same amount in tax funded dollars: 70.7%. In other words, the United States already pays the same amount of money that could fund universal healthcare  —  we just aren’t getting any the benefits. Although Canada’s system certainly has flaws, Canadians still overwhelmingly approve of universal healthcare as a whole, with 94% calling it a source of collective pride.

That’s not all: if we want to get serious about cutting the deficit and don’t want to rip Medicare to shreds, many studies by economists such as Dean Baker have shown how a single-payer healthcare plan would actually be a great solution.

Some point to the idea of “free market healthcare” as an alternative option, but in practice this would price out the poor. This is a very real issue, because if a working class person with a relatively low income  —  say, a mechanic  —  comes down with brain cancer, the cost of treatment would greatly exceed their income level, leaving that person the option of either begging their friends for tens of thousands of dollars, or accepting that they have to die without receiving treatment.

In a free market healthcare system, unregulated health insurance companies would be financially rewarded for not accepting sick customers, and punished if they did accept them. Healthcare companies reap profits every month when their customers are healthy, and lose money when their customers are sick. This means that a healthcare company that’s looking to profit will refuse applications from customers who are already sick  —  in other words, patients with “pre-existing conditions”  —  exactly the people who need healthcare the most.

Let’s not forget the pharmaceutical industry, which is a whole other can of worms. The United States is the only developed country in the world that allows drug companies to set their own prices, which is why last year Turing Pharmaceuticals was able to jack up the price of Daraprim from $13.50 a tablet to $750. Unlike other countries, where prices are set as part of a bureaucratic process, the US system opens the door for these companies to step in and maximize profits, as if a lifesaving drug was comparable to a pair of jeans.

But healthcare shouldn’t be about profit. It deserves the same priority in our society that we give to the police, the military, and the fire department, because healthcare isn’t like buying a flat screen TV: people don’t want healthcare services for their enjoyment, they need them, and a person should not be thrown into bankruptcy because on one unlucky day an icicle dropped onto them from a rooftop.

Ideally, the entire purpose of government in the type of democratic society that we have today is to serve the needs of the people. As a healthcare worker, I can’t possibly see how this principle doesn’t apply to health. I’ve been there when people died, seen people suffer when they shouldn’t have had to, all while corporations mark down record profits from the suffering of human beings. So yes, I do believe that “healthcare is a right, not a privilege,” and I’m not alone. The evidence shows that the various universal healthcare systems that exist in every other developed country are both less expensive and more effective than what we have in the United States.

Again, this shouldn’t be a political battle. It’s an issue of basic human rights. So when will we get with the program? Hopefully soon.

DMU Timestamp: September 17, 2018 17:21

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