Health Care
Sound economic policy must take into account the present high cost and low availability of medical care. A healthy economy requires healthy workers; however, the American model of individual responsibility, employer-provided health insurance, and for-profit medical care has not only failed to deliver high-quality health care for everyone, it has resulted in a great disparity of care between wealthy and working people.
From an economic point of view, the high cost of health care places American companies at a competitive disadvantage, worldwide, and the gigantic profits earned by health care providers and drug companies drain off enormous sums of capital better spent on other things.
The bottom line is that we pay far more for much less health care than is provided by any other industrialized economy. In 2007, we spent $1.3 trillion, or $7,600 per person, for health care – more than 16 percent of our gross domestic product. By 2016, the cost is projected to rise to $4.2 trillion, or 20 percent of GDP. Since 2000, employers’ health insurance premiums have risen 100 percent to an average of $12,100 last year for a family of four. During the same period, the share paid by individual workers has risen by 143 percent. This year, American companies will probably earn less than they spend for health insurance.
Hundreds of thousands of workers with "good" health care benefits will be laid off this year at the same time that the cost of health care is rising along with food, fuel and all other essentials. Two out of five people have had a problem paying for medical care in just the last year. When life and death situations occur, working people must use their reduced savings, borrow on their overextended credit cards or fail to pay for other essentials, such as housing, food or heat.
Neither of the presidential candidates proposes an effective solution to the health care crisis. Obama wants to impose a tax on employers who do not provide health insurance and to ensure "affordable" health insurance to all others. However, the only real guarantee of his "universal" coverage is that insurance companies, medical care providers and drug companies will continue to siphon their enormous profits out of the economy. McCain’s solution is even more simple minded. He thinks we have too much medical insurance and wants to do away with employer-provided health insurance entirely. McCain wants to force employers to pay taxes on all health care costs and to require all of us to purchase individual policies in a "free" market dominated by unregulated and predatory insurance companies.
One alternative increasingly supported by the medical profession is a single-payer system similar to that operated in Canada, much like universal Medicare; however, since the single-payer system subsidizes for-profit health care, its cost in comparison to its benefits would continue to be a substantial drain on the economy.
Let us envision a nonprofit National Health Corps whereby we decide as a matter of public policy that it is just as important for us to enjoy good health as it is to be free from a military attack. Let us envision that we can pay for universal health care for all citizens and reduce individual federal taxes.
Perhaps we should establish a National Health Academy, along the lines of our military academies, whose graduates will become professional Health Corps officers. Although the task would be gargantuan, the Health Corps could assume responsibility for the operation of all public health, veteran’s and military hospitals; for every county and community hospital; and ultimately for most major medical centers across America.
Most of these hospitals should be dedicated as teaching centers to ensure that we have an abundant supply of highly qualified doctors, nurses and medical technicians and that we receive the very best medical care that is available in the world.
The Health Corps should also be responsible for the operation of medical and dental clinics in our public schools. Health, vision, and dental care could be provided at neighborhood schools during and after classes, both for students and for their neighborhood families. Importantly, preventive medicine could help ensure that every child arrives at school ready to learn.
The Health Corps could assume responsibility for providing medical care within the military and for teaching medical corpsman skills to every military recruit. Properly trained and equipped, our military personnel could become revered lifesavers at major disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
Rather than to naysay the possibility of high-quality national health care, envision the liberating effect such a project would have on American businesses. They would be finally freed from the cost of providing medical benefits to their employees and from the medical costs of workers’ compensation insurance.
The Health Corps could also establish medical, dental and vision clinics on the premises of major industries. The increase in productivity attributed to a healthy workforce could be enormous, and we would become far more competitive with all other industrialized nations, particularly those that provide national health care to their workers.
The birth of a national health care system would not result in the demise of private health care. We should be able to determine the average cost of national health care on an individual basis, and those taxpayers who opt out of the national health care system should be entitled to a standard spending tax deduction equal to the average cost.
We will never achieve our potential as a society until every pregnant mother, every infant, every student, every worker, and every disabled and retired person has equal access to the most advanced health care in the world. This is something we can do together, for ourselves, and for each other; there is no good reason why we shouldn’t.
