Sick to Death: Health Care in America

For the nearly 50 million Americans who have no health insurance and cannot get it, for the dozens of millions more who have inadequate insurance, and the millions more whose health care needs are routinely denied by for-profit insurance companies, relief can’t come too soon.

Many are hoping the next President will tackle problems too long ignored by the Bush administration, and most concerned Americans realize that only the Democratic candidates are taking the issue seriously. Republicans seem to be unanimous in their “More of the Same” philosophy, as well as cuts in funding for services to the poor in order to pay for the war in Iraq while ‘privatizing’ national security to firms like Haliburton and Blackwater with no-bid contracts.

Oh, sure. Guiliani and McCain have plans, after a kind. That kind being to force all Americans to purchase health insurance while capping participation and cutting fees for government subsidized systems like SCHIP, Medicare and Medicaid. Which doesn’t help anyone who can’t afford private insurance, it just makes criminals out of them. The “free and unfettered” futures market in human suffering that has gifted us with the worst medical care system among all industrialized nations and ranks us at around 49 on the list for infant mortality and life expectancy.

I understand the conservative disdain for “socialized medicine.” I hear it often from people who happen to enjoy excellent health care coverage, usually from the government. Yet as someone with no insurance and no money to buy my way, I’m here to tell you that the “socialized medicine” I enjoyed as a Navy brat and then as a Navy wife was a heckuva lot better than nothing.

Why, there are so many uninsured poor in my area that the local ERs (Bush’s “safety net” for the poor) make no pretense anymore of stitching cuts or setting broken bones. Usually they’ll clean a wound, put on a butterfly and prescribe some pain pills they know won’t be bought because the patients can’t afford them. Make an appointment with a specialist next week, they say while shuffling basically untreated patients out the door. What we’ve got isn’t working for most Americans. I’m one of ‘em.

All the Democratic candidates for the ’08 nomination have health plans, but some seem like bare lip service while others are detailed enough to require pdf compression in multiple parts. The best are from Obama, Edwards, Kucinich and Clinton, with Obama’s as the stand-out. These all involve some version of single-payer or government subsidy, which is good. Unfortunately, they also rely on increasing employer-provided coverage by law, which won’t help answer competition problems in world markets that are costing jobs.

If this issue resonates with you, links to the candidates’ health care policy papers are listed below. And may the strongest policy win!

Some in-depth blog analysis of candidate health care plans, with great links and a wealth of detail:

Health Care ’08: How Do the Candidates Compare?

Susan Blumenthal, M.D.: US Presidential Candidates’ Health Plans

How the ’08 Democratic candidates stack up: Health Care

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Filed under Health Care, Presidential Candidates, Universal Care | Comments (2)