Uninsured
Posted at 1:41 pm on Friday, April 3, 2009, in Uncategorized, and tagged bush, health, hillary clinton, obama.
There will always remain a portion of the U.S. population that is uninsured. There is no way around it. Any purported efforts to completely cover the uninsured are disingenuous because it is impossible to do so. When Hillary Clinton argued that her health care plan was better than Barack Obama’s during the 2008 primary because her plan “covers every single American,” she was being intellectually dishonest. In the existing employer-based system — where individuals have the option to obtain coverage — there will always be a significant number of uninsured persons. It is simply a function of the system.
Any claim to rid the nation of the uninsured is a call for universal health care, plain and simple, a mandate that every person must have health care coverage, no ifs, ands or buts. (Hillary Clinton never made this declaration. She mimicked the idea of universal coverage with her plans to require health care providers accept everyone who applied for coverage, but she didn’t call for a mandate of coverage.)
The problem lies that, under our existing system, it makes sense financially for many people — typically younger workers and the self-employed — to not have coverage. As a result, the premiums for everyone who do purchase coverage are higher than they would be if there were universal coverage. The more healthy people that are in the pool, the lower the cost for the individuals in the pool. Universal coverage would significantly decrease the cost of health insurance.
Honesty in politics is necessary in the age of information. Universal coverage is the only answer to covering the uninsured, and the entire country would be better off as a result. There would remain aspects of universal coverage for entrepreneurship, capitalism and profit-making. Competition does not have to be removed, but every person needs health insurance — it is a civil right.
We need to get beyond the status quo arguments against universal health care that we are currently mired in — that it equates to socialism and it makes your health a matter of a bureaucrat. Nothing could be further from the truth (well, maybe some things, like Bush’s Clear Skies Initiative was good for the environment). Similarly, we must understand that there is a place for market forces in the health care industry. Competition is a good thing, and we shouldn’t discard it.
As a nation, we can stand out on a ledge, and on many issues we do. Health care shouldn’t be one of them. The U.S. should follow the lead of Canada and nations in Europe, and mandate universal health care coverage for every citizen. We need to ensure that the ledge we stand upon is directly above a truck-load of soft pillows.
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April 3rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Uninsured :: reyonthehill http://bit.ly/6XOK
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
The day has finally come – we are in total agreement on an issue! :)
April 5th, 2009 at 10:00 am
For a quick, although not totally dispassionate and impartial, education in universal health care coverage, watch Michael Moore’s wondeful propaganda film “Sicko.” If a petty dictatorship like Cuba can offer excellent health care to its citizens, why can’t we?
April 7th, 2009 at 9:51 am
@chuck – Sicko was a great film, despite its partiality.