Herald Editorial: Health care cannot be a commodity to be bought and sold

United States citizens are guaranteed certain human rights; the right to free speech, the right to an attorney, the right to an independent press. We are even granted the right to a public education, funded by tax dollars.

Why, then, all the commotion over the idea that universal healthcare belongs among that pantheon of promises?

America is the wealthiest, most privileged nation in human history. We reached that point through the success of a fiercely competitive capitalist economy, guided by an undying belief in the superiority of a free market. Given our past success with the private sector in other industries, the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s efforts at health care reform is understandable.

While there are still several different bills floating around the halls of Congress, the best hope for reform seems to be the model known as a public option. The proposed public option would let citizens purchase their insurance from a not-for-profit government provider. The thinking goes that the government can make health coverage more affordable than corporations because they do not have to answer to shareholders who expect a profit.

Opponents of reform object to government involvement in a profitable industry. These detractors – largely made up of Republicans with more than a few conservative Democrats sprinkled in – argue that private insurers will never be able to compete with a publicly-run competitor.

True, private insurers will have to make significant adjustments if reform is passed. It would not be called reform if nothing changed. They may find it necessary to lower their rates or find other ways to make their product as appealing as the presumably less expensive government insurance policy.

This begs the question whether traditional free-market ideas should be applied at all to a service industry so different from others in its purpose. Encompassing private insurers, medical practitioners and pharmaceutical companies, the entire health care industry has been profiting for years off of a marketplace that is rigged in their favor.

The consumers of medical goods and services often have no real choice on whether or not to purchase the goods they are being peddled. If a product is necessary for the well being of its user, that person has no leverage from which to negotiate a fair price.

For this reason, health care cannot be viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold. In 21st century America, access to reasonably priced treatment and medication should be regarded as a basic human right, not a privilege granted to only those who can cover the buy-in to play the insurance companies’ game.

It is amazing that some opponents of reform can say without equivocation that America is “the greatest country on Earth” when 46 million of its uninsured citizens, according to US Census Bureau statistics, could be bankrupted tomorrow by an unlucky accident. This blind spot for America’s shortcomings prevents those very flaws from being fixed.

This is the part where shouts of blasphemy come rumbling down from the purple mountains majesty.

Mitt Romney can name his book whatever he wants (he did: “No Apology: The Case For American Greatness”), but the sorry truth is a country that allows its people to go broke just because they get sick definitely has room for improvement.

According to a report recently published in the American Journal of Medicine, 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in America in 2007 were directly related to debt resulting from medical expenses. Many of those who filed had some degree of insurance coverage and still could not fight off financial ruin.

Don Cooney, Kalamazoo City Commissioner and assistant professor of social work at Western Michigan University, has been fighting for reform along with Kalamazoo Single-Payer Across the Nation (KSPAN).

“You have to get [health care] out of the market, or some people are going to be left out,” Cooney said.

Although he is an advocate of the single-payer system, Cooney considers a public option an acceptable alternative to the status quo. America’s health care system becomes more costly every year, and it could be a mistake to allow things to continue on their current course.

“The economic system can’t sustain itself if we do nothing,” Cooney said.

We spend twice as much on health care per capita as the average among other industrialized nations, and still rank low in performance (37th in the world according to the World Health Organization) and leave 46 million uninsured.

The national inflation rate is about 2 percent per year. Compare that to health care costs that have risen between 7-10 percent in recent years. Not only do we leave millions uninsured, but also people who can afford to pay their hospital bills are getting majorly ripped off.

A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office claimed the Senate Finance Committee bill (one of the more likely to pass) would cost $829 billion over 10 years. Economics aside, this debate comes back to the difference between viewing health care as a commodity ripe for trade or a human right that no one in a nation as affluent as the US should ever be denied.

No one should go bankrupt because they fall ill or have an accident. No American citizen should be turned away from life-saving medical treatment because they can’t foot the bill. The very least Washington should do (and we mean as a last resort) is offer an affordable public option to the poorest of Americans, who right now may as well start hoarding Powerball tickets if they ever want to see the inside of a doctor’s office.

The public option, originally thought of as a fair compromise between a single-payer and the conservative plan (“everything’s great!”), is faltering in the Senate. Regardless of how young we are or how many apples we eat, we will all someday need to see a doctor for more than just a checkup. Whether that is a viable option or not will be decided for each of us in the halls of Congress this fall.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Oct 12 2009. Filed under Editorial, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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