Posted by
FJR on Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:14:39 PM
“Health care is not the only threat to our democracy. ” These were the words uttered by Republican Congressman Wally Herger at a town hall meeting with his constituents on August 18th. This is still the input that we are getting from our elected officials. The words "government takeover," "death panels," and "euthanasia" are still all apart of the Republican vocabulary. And when they actually do decide to offer solutions? We hear proposals of a wider range of competition, tort reform, and the elimination of insurance denial based on pre-existing conditions. All necessary, but all are surface reform for those with insurance already. There has been no sign of productive debate. Enough is enough.
With all of this, the status quo still remains. The US is still the only industrialized nation without national health insurance. 45.7 million Americans are still uninsured, 15.3% of the population. 18, 000 people still die a year because they do not have health insurance. U.S. life expectancy is still worse than Canada, France, and the UK. The U.S. still has the highest expenditure on healthcare, 16% of GDP, and the highest expenditure per capita, $7, 290. We still have a higher infant mortality rate per 1000 births than Canada, UK, and France. Over a third (36%) of families living below the poverty line are still uninsured. More than 9 million children still lack health insurance. Medical bills still underlie 60% of U.S. bankruptcies. Administrative costs still account for 31 % of all healthcare expenditures in the United States, with the average overhead for U.S. private insurers being 11. 7%; for Medicare it is 3.6%; for Canada's national health insurance program, it is 1.3%. A baby born in El Salvador still has a better chance of surviving than a baby born in Detroit. The infant mortality rate in Detroit is 15.5%, compared to El Salvador's 9.7%. A study in the journal of the American Medical Association found that older Americans are still significantly less healthy than their British counterparts- we still have more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease, and cancer. Even the poorest Brits can expect to live longer than the richest Americans. Cubans still have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States and according to the U.N. Human Development Report, a longer average lifespan. Over the next decade, the federal government will still give the drug and health care industries an estimated $822 billion as a result of the 2003 enactment of Medicare Part D.
So... why are are Republicans so insistent on preserving this? Part of the reason, I suppose, is that there are 4 times as many healthcare lobbyists in Washington as there are U.S. Senators. The other part though is ideological. These people, the people you saw at the town halls, Congressman Herger who says that healthcare is a threat to democracy, half term governor Sarah Palin who legitimized the "death panel" scare, Sean Hannity who believes we have the best healthcare in the world, and Glenn Beck who fears a rationing of healthcare, when private health insurers already ration care for their customers, these people are protecting something.
They are protecting a free market, government is not the answer, way of thinking. They believe that whenever we face a problem as a nation, that government does not have role in the solution. Furthermore, they believe that if the government does involve itself in the solution, that the goal will not be met. At Congressmen Herger's town hall, a questioner asked the Congressman if "health care is a right?" and if not, "who should be denied?" The Congressman responded saying "everyone should have access to healthcare" without declaring it a "right." "You call it a right. I call it something else," Herger said.
It is almost as if those dissident to a public option live in their own little world in which they lie to themselves to prevent what would be a frightening reckoning with the brutality of their applied logic. They must know that Medicare is a socialized, single payer healthcare program. Where has been the fight from the right over the past 30 years to get rid of it? Why are they not fighting Medicare with the same vigor that they are fighting this hypothetical public option with? Where is the consistency?
There a two extremes in this debate: unfettered private healthcare and single payer. A public option is neither. It is smack dab in the middle of the two. So why is the right calling this a government takeover? They do it because, I believe, change really does scare them. They are frightened by the fact that if true reform were to happen, the dynamics of health care will change forever.
They call it Conservatism for a reason. Yes the definition has come to mean a belief in limited government and individual liberty, two very important things. But from time to time, the rudimentary definition of Conservatism, a desire to conserve what's in place, must be cast aside. We have the chance to reinvent here. We can't let fear get in our way. Enough is enough.
http://www.mtshastanews.com/news/x769902147/Congressman-Herger-calls-Obama-plan-threat-to-democracy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8201711.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5530Y020090604
www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/_media/SiCKO_sickofactoids.pdf