We can see on the surface the similarities between all the essential services, so we must ask ourselves: what's different about health care? Why is it special? The short answer is: it's not. The only way it differs is how we THINK about it. Or how we've been taught to think.
Rather than accept the idea that they've been hoodwinked, I've had people actually argue this point! "Heath care is more expensive," they say. My answer: in what way? Have you ever bought a fire truck? Do you know what a fully loaded police cruiser costs? Do you have any idea what the prison system costs taxpayers every year and what your share of it is? Health care is indeed expensive, but most of us will need their services less than police and fire. Lest we forget, taxpayers sent people to the moon, which was a ridiculously expensive proposition. We fund wars that have expenses that dwarf any projection for health care. When it comes to dollars and cents, health care for all is doable.
The next argument: "Medicare is going broke! The government can't run anything!" Yet we take it as an article of faith that we have "the best military in the world." So how can the government have perfection on one end, and total incapability on the other? If one digs into the details, we can trace most of the financial problems to politicians jacking money from one program to another. The fact is that private health insurance costs its customers 30 cents of every dollar, while Medicare operates at about a tenth of that amount: three cents per dollar. Proponents of universal health care point out all of the other countries that have government run insurance, such as Great Britain, Canada, Germany and France, which, by the way, provides it's citizens with the highest quality of health care in the world. Detractors then point out all of the problems with each, most of which involve money. Canada's waiting lists are all but legendary now. The UK is among those providing the worst quality health care and the French system is going broke.
Yet rational people realize that ALL programs of any type will be imperfect. They will all have problems to solve. If you're waiting for perfection, you'll be paralyzed forever! Instead, let's take a look at what we've got. First, our non-system is the most expensive per-person of any industrialized nation, yet we're ranked at #27 as to quality of health care. Detractors talk about rationing, yet insurance companies routinely limit the amount of coverage they'll provide for any given procedure, including chronic maladies. They holler "death panels" while insurance companies kick kidney dialysis patients out of their policy for some petty paperwork error. In short, all of the sins attributed to government run health care are being perpetrated now by our for-profit insurance industry.
When Obama was campaigning and talking about a single-payer system, he set the insurance cartels into high gear. They considered it a "shot across the bow," seeing a potential end to their gravy train of access to the public's wallet. After all, they have one thing that no other industry has: exclusion from anti-trust laws! So they can collude and monopolize as much as they want, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. Some say, "They should be allowed to sell across state lines and compete!" But this is NOT a handicap: it's exactly how the industry wants it. Like organized crime bosses, they've divided-up the country into "turf." The collude, keeping prices high by mutual agreement, and a lack of competition allows it to continue while shutting out any competitors who might want to "muscle in" and give them any real competition. Until this state of affairs is changed, don't expect any real reform.
"and the only way this can change is if Congress acts.
This might be a light-bulb moment for some readers! This explains, for instance, why the notion of "single payer" was taken off the table at the very beginning! It also explains the vigorous opposition to a "public option," since the health insurance industry is one of the largest campaign contributors with the most lobbyists in DC. Your representatives the people working for US are mostly all in the pocket of big insurance.
Now here is where I'll step on a few toes, and those toes will belong to liberals. Health care is NOT a right. As cool as that sounds and as much as we might agree with the sentiment, rights are very specific in one way: they require nothing of others, aside from respect. For instance, your freedoms of speech, a free press, of assembly, of self-defense, of worship and so on do not require anyone to give you anything or be of any kind of uncompensated service. So, for instance, your right to a free press does not require the government to provide you with a printing press! But you're free to buy one if you can and publish what you will. Your second amendment rights gives you the right to own and protect yourself and your family with a gun, but does not require the government to provide you with one.
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