Healthcare: What is There to Discuss?

Health care should be the simplest thing in the world. We're talking about the health of the country. We're talking about the lives of it's citizens. Is there anyone who truly believes that your relative chances for a long life should depend on your economic situation? If you do happen to believe that, you probably work for the insurance industry.

So, given that we should be doing everything we can to make sure everyone can get treated for any medical problem they happen to have, the question of health care should be automatically removed from the private, profit-making enterprises that make up the health insurance industry. We don't privatize the police or fire departments, yet no one accuses them of being 'socialist' in nature, so clearly there is room for having the government run essential services in our society, and if you are seriously going to entertain the notion that putting out the fire that is consuming your house is an essential service, but treating your cancer isn't, I think you will need to explain yourself.

There should be no discussion about whether or not everyone should have their medical expenses paid for free. The discussion should be about how to do it. There should be no discussion about whether there should be a public option. There is no possible way to stop people being denied coverage unfairly if you are going to make profit the #1 driver behind health care, and if you allow private enterprise to run it, then profit will ALWAYS be the #1 driver behind health care. That is the way private enterprise functions. This is not meant to denigrate the private industry. Profit is how things work. You can't have a health care industry that decides coverage issues on the basis of who needs medical attention. It is an economic decision and profit is the basis for an economic decision. If you somehow remove that, then the private enterprise will not be able to compete and it will fail. If you don't remove that, then the lives of people with health insurance will be, by necessity, a secondary consideration. So the question becomes; are we making the health of the nation the most important aspect of health care? If you say 'yes' then we cannot continue to let it be a profit-making institution.

It's not socialism for the government to run health care. As I said, essential services are run by the government. The reason this is the case is because they are too important to leave to people who's primary motivation is to make a profit. These things cannot be run effectively as profit making industries. More than accepting that, we demand it. If someone started a bill through congress that was to give our police departments over to the corporate world, there would be mass demonstrations to stop it and the founders of the bill would find themselves without a job in the next election. So all that remains is for us to decide that health care is an essential service, and I don't see how it could not be considered essential. The idea that government can't or shouldn't run health care is silly. "Government-run" doesn't automatically mean it will be run badly. If government-run law enforcement isn't socialist, then why is government-run health care?

Of course the number two argument against government-run health care is the cost. We don't want our taxes to go up, and we don't want the quality of our health care to go down when we start cutting costs. I haven't seen any numbers that would explain in any general sense how much it will cost, but I would expect the figure to be in the billions every year, but we manage to find billions to pay for the stupid things in the budget. Why not for something that's important? Even if we can't without raising taxes.... I hate tax increases mainly because I can't see any value for my money. When taxes go up, it is usually because the government wants more money for..... something, or because they have mismanaged what they've already been given so badly that they require more money to fix it.... and usually whatever they are trying to fix doesn't actually get fixed. Selling a tax increase for actual tangible value, on the other hand... something that will benefit everyone, especially those who can't afford health care as things stand now.... If the politicians can't manage to sell the American public on that, then they don't deserve the votes we so foolishly gave them. I complain about taxes as much (probably more) than the next person, but for this I would gladly put up AND shut up.

We've been conditioned to accept privately run health care, not necessarily because it works but because we think the alternative is worse, but in reality some government-run institutions work. We can't make privately run health care work the way we want it. The system isn't designed for it. When will it ever be more profitable to cover everyone than to exclude high-risk customers? The answer is obvious, and although we can use legislation to force insurance companies to do what we want, they will always be looking for ways to maximize profits and skimp on coverage. This means either the cost of health care will go up or the quality will go down. This is just the way that free enterprise works. The insurance companies aren't evil for doing it. We are stupid for thinking that they would do anything else. We NEED to find another way. We CAN make government-run health care work. We just have to decide to do so.