By Keith C. Milne
The high cost of healthcare in America is crippling America’s true economic output potential. I can assure you that there will be few people living in the U.S. who will argue that their healthcare money outflow hasn’t reached absurd levels in recent years. Between the constant annual increases that have been on the order of 6% to 10% annually for decades, and the you-pay-more-each-year-and-get-less-coverage model that has become an American staple, those of us lucky enough to have insurance, are all paying more than ever before in modern history not for healthcare coverage, but for PARTIAL healthcare coverage.
It’s as if the entire industry, from the insurance companies, to the myriad hospitals, clinics, and private practice offices, and all the computer equipment and network apparatus collectively are slowly bankrupting the citizens of our country. The monster’s appetite keeps growing wanting more and more in the form of premiums for us to pay, while we have more and more out-of-pocket expenses, new items each year that are not covered anymore or are only partly covered now. Co-payments are going up every year, as are deductibles, and out-of-pocket limits. And, this is REGARDLESS of how often, or not, you use the medical system.
If you have zero medical issues, eat well, exercise, get plenty of rest, etc., and doing those things pays off for you in the sense that you only have to see doctors for checkups and nothing else, ever, then you are reaping the rewards for making quality lifestyle choices. It is unfortunate that this effort isn’t also rewarded with lower health insurance costs. Rather than factoring that in, most often, only someones age and gender will be the deciding factor about what they, or the entire insurance group will pay this year, or the next in the form of higher premiums. So, a never-go-to-the-doctor person pays the same as someone who runs to the doctor constantly for every little ache and pain and runny nose. Go figure.
It’s kind of like people who don’t have children paying high property taxes to support the new school even though they have never had a child in the school system. It could be argued that this is a form of a hidden subsidy, and a higher burden on a single person with no children. However, from a broader, societal perspective, it is also serving the greater good that all who own property in a community pay some taxes to support the school system in that community because having an educated population increases employment, and job creating businesses, while also contributing to a lower crime rate, and better overall quality of life within the community.
I state that the same principle should apply to healthcare. A healthy population that receives regular, quality health preventive services, enjoys an overall better quality of life, are happier, live longer, and have lower healthcare costs from a higher percentage of people living in the community enjoying better health and longevity. These are real outcomes. More access to quality healthcare equals healthier population enjoying better quality of life, healthier and safer and more prosperous communities, and increased longevity. Less access to quality healthcare equals an overall less healthy population, living in a lower quality of life due to more frequent illnesses or improper or no care for issues that arise during the course of a person’s life, thereby shortening it. Higher incidents of depression are also often ancillary to this model due to more people suffering more often and awareness of more people who are also ill, have suffered medically, or have died prematurely.
Recognizing these facts, and coming to the realization that everyone needs and should have access to quality healthcare, and that healthcare is a human right, just like food, water, and shelter, and not a privilege, MOST countries of our world decided to carry out some form of free medical care or universal healthcare, or both!
Why not the United States of America? We always like to tout ourselves as being so great and the inventors of this, that, and the other gadget, but we’re letting huge, multi-national corporate pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, medical device manufacturers, and bio-medical companies reap the benefits of the research and development coming out of our public universities at the taxpayers cost, using that information to develop and patent new drugs and products, then charge the most they can possible get away with to us.
In many other countries, the government helps to control the cost to their citizenry by subsidizing some of that cost, and often very carefully regulating overall medical costs as well. Remember, they do this because they are approaching healthcare from the perspective of healthcare as a right, and not a privilege. Once that truth penetrates and is no longer an issue, it makes healthcare for profit seem a tad greedy or even evil doesn’t it? Oh, you can’t pay, well then, we’ll just give you a shot of morphine and send you over to another hospital. Good luck buddy!
For other countries, citizens pay a healthcare tax and all of that money is strictly for the healthcare fund. In our country, we could easily have a system like they enjoy in Israel, simply by paying another dime per gallon gas tax, and increase the tax on the income of anyone making $500K per year or more by 2%. Can you imagine only having to pay another ten cents per gallon at the pump, and not have hundreds of dollars per month deducted from you pay for healthcare premiums!?
America is right up there with some of the poorest countries in the world (Haiti) as one of the few places that have no free or universal healthcare! As hard as we work?! As much as we produce, and invent, and carry on our backs?! It’s mind bending to me how every time the issue comes up publicly, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries spend millions on ads trying to convince all of us that having single payor healthcare will make America socialist. Even though Socialism emerges as the best system on the planet FOR PEOPLE, Capitalism emerges as the best system in the world for corporate profit, disenfranchising the poorest people the most.
There are still so many uneducated people in the United States that don’t think that we can actually have something like universal or single payor healthcare, simply because we’ve never had that before! And, the minute they hear the word, “Socialism” or the term, “Socialized Medicine,” they immediately startup with all the “No government is telling me what I can and can’t do with my body! Or when I can or can’t get surgery!? Another complaint I’ve heard a lot is, “Have you heard about all those people over in Great Britain and the U.K. who die waiting for heart surgery?” And, the rumors abound. Finally, it seems that the word Socialism transforms itself as if by magic, helped by vivid, uneducated imaginations and drowning in mis-information, into meaning communism in the minds of those that worry about these things intensely. Once that happens, that’s where all hopes for a better medical way for the people of the Unites States gets thrown back into the heap of things to forget about.
Since this type of system is usually brought up as something to explore for America by a Democrat, those who fear the worst and don’t understand that socialized medicine would save them so much money it would improve their lives almost immediately, they equate democrat=liberal=socialized medicine=communism=I have to share something I worked my ass off for with no good slackers who want to sit around all day smoking cigarettes, making babies, and buying lottery tickets with my hard-earned tax money! So, they go all the way over to the Tea Party with their anger, and start voting for people who are no better than a slick talking used car sales rep, who slips his hand into your back pocket to slide your wallet out, while showing you a piece of shit lemon-mobile, all the while with a smile on his face and talking a mile a minute!
Well, I could just go on and on and on about how much better it would be. But, we’ll never know unless you are willing to give it a try! Right? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it with sky-high medical costs. I cannot believe how much more I’m paying out-of-pocket now. Shocking how much it costs per month for my wife and I to have healthcare coverage, and still have to pay for “our share” after the insurance company has decided how much they’re going to pay, and how much they’re going to apply to your deductible. It’s ridiculous. It would be so much better for everyone to have a card, like a driver’s license, or have one card as our drivers license, our medical card, and our passport for that matter.
Then when we go to the doctor, it will be like it is in Taiwan, France, Canada, and so many other countries, your “card” is slid through a card reader, they hand your card back to you. You wait a short while and then see the doctor. You leave when you’re done and you never see any bill of any kind. It’s taken care of. No appeals, no rules to remember, no gotchas, no calling the insurance company ahead of your surgery to make sure they know about it and use the opportunity to remind you of what they won’t pay for, whether you need what they won’t pay for or not. Gosh!, wouldn’t it be awful to only have to show a card and then be done with any further paperwork, or co-payments, or any other bureaucracy?
Countries that have this type of system, which is everyone who is anyone, EXCEPT the U.S., (just like everyone using metric, EXCEPT the U.S.), include the happiest and healthiest people on earth, like the Danish, and all of them are doing better than us at keeping people healthy. The statistics don’t lie. Neither does poor healthcare, lack of access to it, or a system that only allows those with insurance or the wealthy to become ripped off and have to pay more for everything they receive than all the countries out there in the rest of the world with universal healthcare.
If you know this stuff, then help convince those who don’t that it is in their best interest to vote for people who want to begin this type of system. They would have far more of their own money to save and spend. The economy would benefit from the increased spending in a huge way. Most of that money going into the coffers of the insurance companies would essentially be redistributed back to the people as a form of a salary increase from decreased premium withholding! That is more disposable income for better vacations, saving for kids college, saving for retirement, or a new car so you won’t have to go see slick willy anymore and drive piece of shit lemon-mobiles anymore. Universal healthcare would make people feel less stressed and happier. That would improve their health and improve the quality of their lives, and they would live longer.
Now that there are so many countries with very successful models that are working very well, there is no reason in the world, continuing with corporate greed aside, that we cannot vote to finally give ourselves a huge break, and take some of our own hard-earned money back, and have a high quality, single payor healthcare system that uses that best of what other countries have come up with so far.
It’s not rocket science folks. Just common sense. That, and a belief that, even though it hasn’t been done HERE before, it can! We can and should do this. If we do, for many people it will result in the single biggest increase in their income that they will ever see during their lifetime. So, let’s give ourselves a big raise! We all deserve it. Life is only as hard as we’re going to make it for ourselves at this point. We’ve come too far with technology for anything less to even be a realistic option. Why toil and suffer when we don’t have too? Remember . . . this is our country.
Let’s do this and send a loud and clear message to our government that we’re ready to make it ours again! And let them know, that we’re going to put the people of this country before capitalist profit. A country is only as healthy as the people who live in it.