by Madeleine Kando
I have tried to understand why so many Americans are against health care reform. To me, a country without universal health care is not a civilized country, it is a barbaric country. Is America a barbaric country? Maybe one has to go way back in history to understand why America is so reluctant to provide this most basic of human right to its citizens.
Germany was one of the first western European countries to provide compulsory sickness insurance back in 1883. Austria, Hungary, Norway, Britain, Russia, and the Netherlands followed suit. In the early 20th century Sweden, Denmark, France and Switzerland also adopted universal health care. The primary reason for these early programs was protection against wage loss due to sickness rather than payment for medical expenses.
Ironically, in Britain and Germany the sickness insurance programs were developed by conservative governments to counter the expansion of the socialist and labor parties. They used sickness insurance as a way of 'turning benevolence to power'.
At that time, the working class in the US was against universal health care because they thought that a government-based insurance system would weaken unions by providing social benefits. They wanted to maintain union strength. During World War I and afterwards, compulsory health insurance was successfully associated with Communism by its opponents and it lost momentum.
During the Great Depression, although it was an ideal time to pass compulsory health insurance, priority went to unemployment insurance. FDR was afraid that the Social Security legislation would not pass if it included health insurance.
Truman was the first president who fully supported a single payer health insurance plan, but Congress was against it and so was the AMA. In fact, the American Medical Association has always been against health care reform and in those days it was very successful at linking it to socialism and Communism.
In 1958, Rhode Island Congressman Aime Forand proposed to cover hospital costs for the aged on social security. For the first time in health care reform history, there was large grass roots support for reform. As usual, the AMA tried to stop it by offering its own version of 'elderly care', but the government expanded its proposal by covering physician services as well. This became Medicare and Medicaid. It clearly shows that if a large group of citizens wants something done, it will put enough pressure on politicians to make it happen. **
After the horrors and human rights abuses of the Second World War the International Bill of Human Rights was signed by the United Nations. It represented the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are entitled. It includes the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Article 12 of the Covenant, the 'Right to Health', states that Governments must protect this right by providing a comprehensive system of healthcare, which is available to everyone without discrimination.
Of the 167 countries that signed the Covenant only seven didn't ratify it. The United States is one of them. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations did not see this Covenant as rights but merely as social goals. Even though the Clinton Administration did see these rights as basic human rights, it did not fight Congress over the Covenant. The Obama Administration doesn't have anything to say about it.
Not only is the whole health care reform issue too complicated for most people to understand, not only is it infested with special interest groups and tainted in the eyes of the public with notions of 'over-dependence on the government', there is also an ideological difference in the US towards basic human rights which most countries that have adopted universal health care, didn't have to deal with.
Maybe things have to get much worse in this country before a call to arms will occur. Hopefully one day, Americans will finally realize that the barbarians are not at the gate but inside of it. I hope that sooner, rather than later, they will be defeated. leave comment here
** Source can be found on this website: 'Physicians for a National Health Program': A Brief History: Universal Health Care Efforts in the US
11 comments:
I have a couple of questions. First, there is no such thing as "universal" health care. It is not available in Europe - or anywhere else. There are a lot of systems which provide governmentally (or tax) supported health care. Many of them are troubling either because they ration services based on some bureaucrat's thoughts about what is necessary or because they are going bankrupt.
As Chris Kelly suggested when one offers things for completely free, people misallocate it. A key problem with our current system in the US is the misallocation that happens when no one knows the true cost of what they are purchasing.
The American health care system began to become less effective as the government began to get more involved - first with the original implementation of the deductibility of health insurance premiums but then with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. My wife and I are paying more for medical coverage than we did under a group insurance program before I retired. I get nickeled and dimed for some things and have outrageous benefits on others.
Ultimately the problem with the HCA is that it did nothing to improve consumer involvement in health care decisions, dramatically increased demand and did nothing to increase supply of providers. That is a system that is designed to fail. If the Supreme Court votes to reject the HCA, then perhaps saner minds can begin to think about how to create a system which actually improves the situation for health consumers.
Greetings from the U.S.. I love your post and I agree with most of what you said. It is sad to see that many people here are against a united healthcare system. Also it is sad to see that most christians are against it. This boggles my mind on a weekly basis.
regarding Jonathan Brown's comment:
I leave it up to Madeleine, who wrote the post, to refute Brown on specifics.
All I want to say is this: Brown, while well-spoken, is typical of so many conservatives in that just about everything he says consists of ASSERTIONS, not facts.
(E.g "when something is free, people misallocate it." which scientific law is this?)
Yet facts are simple to ascertain. All you have to do is check them out.
And the simple truth is that the (near) universal, government-run health care systems of countries such as Holland, Germany, France, Canada and many, many others, are (1) cheaper and (2) BETTER: By better, I mean that they cause the people of those countries to be healthier and to live longer than Americans. (Is there any other criterion?).
So that's the fact, and the only fact that matters. I’ll repeat: cheaper and better. The American health care system, because it is largely private and largely based on the profit motive (except for Medicare and Medicaid) , is more expensive and it not as good. What else is there to say?
dsI disagree even with the first sentance" so many prople do not want universal health care". A majority do want it they just don't want O'Bama Care which is not well conceived and was barely passed with exceptions,and incentives to individual states for votes. We are still finding out what is in it such as the 3% medical device tax which was rejected by vote last week. Where are all the physicians supposed to come from to provide every conceivable "Preventive care" to everyone?
Tom states that “universal, government-run health care systems…are (1) cheaper and (2) BETTER” . It obviously depends upon your definition of what constitutes “better” – better for the individual or better for society? Whereas the existing USA system may not be better for society, I’m convinced it is better for me. I was born and raised in the UK so I’ve had some experience with socialized medicine in my younger years. However, living in the US, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, and was one of the first patients in my area to be treated with the new brachytherapy treatment (insertion of radioactive seeds). I have been cancer free now for 14 years. However, if I had remained in the UK, brachytherapy was not available in Scotland, Wales, and parts of England until 2006…8 years after my US procedure. Without brachytherapy, I would have gone through a radical prostatectomy with a 40-50% chance of incontinence and impotence. That experience reinforces the idea that government-run healthcare eventually leads to rationing and lack of innovation, and is not in my best interest.
Bryan:
Universal Health Care does not have to be government run. It does not have to lack innovation and, as far as rationing is concerned, it probably rations less than the current US system.
In the US uninsured or underinsured people forego buying medication, they don't go to the doctor when they are sick: isn't that the ultimately form of rationing? 20,000 people die each year in the US because they don't have health insurance. People with chronic illness have the added worry whether they will be able to cover their health care expenses. I myself have a lifetime cap on certain treatments. The co-payments on certain drugs are prohibitively high.
The Dutch health care system is not government run, it is universal and anyone can get supplemental insurance to undergo any treatment they choose. I too have personal experience with socialized medicine. It is a positiveone. It concerns treatment for my 95 year old mother's macular degeneration for which she underwent 2 operations, free of charge. I have not seen any rationing as far as her treatment is concerned.
Madeleine, thank you for your response, but I don’t think you’re going to convince me. I have no knowledge of the Dutch system or whether it’s scalable to American magnitudes, but I’m inclined to believe with our cultural affinity, we would implement single payer (whether government run or not) along British or Canadian lines. I like to cruise a lot to Mexico or the Caribbean in the winter where I meet many Canadians, who for the most part complain about their wait times. In 2007, CBC News reported that “The average wait time for a Canadian awaiting surgery or other medical treatment is now 18.3 weeks, a new high, according to a report released Monday. “, and while the Canadian government took steps to improve those stats, in the past two years they have gotten worse again (perform a Google search on “Canadian Medical Wait Times” and see numerous articles). Your original blog entry questioned “ why so many Americans are against health care reform”. I think I’m probably in the mainstream about this…it’s rational selfishness: for the 80% of us that are insured and very satisfied, restructuring the system to fix the uninsured problem poses too great a risk to the existing excellent care we have and therefore we are opposed to major reform.
Yes, perhaps it is a matter of ideology, more than anything else. I grew up in the Netherlands and my instinct tells me to consider basic health care as part of a citizen’s birth right. Although you cannot compare a small country like Holland with America, when it comes to implementing Health Care reform, if done intelligently, as the Dutch have done, there is room for improvement, even on an individual level.
Actually American government has been in the health care business from the countries inception. The department of Health and Human services according to listed history, if one Googles, An FAQ goes back to 1798. They performed basics which would help our veterans, More over, it was a Republican, a true Republican, not the tea party, Wahhabi varity that created the forerunner of the food and drug administration. President Lincoln.
There is a certain air of confidence many kinds of public departments will eventually become private in time. EVEN NASA, But to give a kick start is only reasonable because of the resources of government. The educational system is now understanding the effects of this technology. Besides, it took the Democratic President to establish the Internet in the school system in America. Clinton, now look at it. The internet has turned into the core main stay of the future of communication in education, and business. Now perhaps its time to realize it will help every citizen in a way that could not be done before.
Imagine to talk to your doctor, placing your hand on a sensor connected to your computer for a physical or a nonintrusive blood analysis for a prescription. Not too far away, and perhaps very advanced technology that is affordable.
Universal Health Care was meant to be...
Most countries in Asia have multi-tiered healthcare options. Kinda like you get what you pay for and most of it never involves insurance.Aactual prices for health services are a fraction of what most people in America pay as premiums for insurance. So insurance is completely unrequired in most cases.
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