Now Playing: I'm against any kind of market-based approach to universal health care.
Topic: Health & Science
Mary makes a well-written case for Single Payer health insurance at Pacific Views today.
"America's health care system is imploding. Despite the fact that America devotes more of its GDP to health care than any other developed country, the real outcome for a significant portion of our country is miserable. And despite all the initiatives that claimed to fix the problem, the problem is getting worse."
As someone who administers state Medicaid in Pacific County and who becomes aware of as many uninsured citizens in an hour as an enterprising researcher could find in a day, I consider the above seriously understated.
"Getting worse" actually means something far fouler smelling than what you see in Sicko.
"Universal health care is particularly unsuited for a market-based approach because people are unable to do a lot of comparison shopping when they are sick and the overwhelming need for health care is when someone is sick, not when they are well."
A market-based approach in this country is the failed altruism of corporate capitalism which for decades has trumpeted the idea that the market could and WOULD take care of society's poor. That by definition is an impossibility given the formal constitutional definition for a "corporation."
That definition literally justifies - even encourages - a single-prioritized bottom-line profit-based approach to enterprises supposedly created to accomplish public good because individuals and small communities cannot create sufficient capital to accomplish it by themselves. It's an approach that has everything to do with some sort of corporate right (a la a human citizen/person's right) to the pursuit of happiness - precisely because corporate pursuit of happiness is pursuit of profit, not public good. It would be like giving a giant leech a constitutionally guaranteed right and protection to suck up the life blood of every citizen and community.
... unless of course one "conservatively " defines "public good" as equal to what's good for business.
I'm against any kind of market-based approach to universal health care.
Our objective should not be the highest priority is what's good for business in this regard. That's the attitude immediately and transparently revealed as harmful and inadequate when ideologically, an American president attempted to suspend minimum wage in the Katrina disaster area;
when he immediately asserted opportunity for profit before securing a disaster area;
- suggesting that the public good is best served if profits are prioritized first.
It borders on oxymoron to even suggest that government should be run as a business first and foremost. One primary reason is that profit unreasonably gets asserted as more important than the public good.
Bushco has amply demonstrated the failure of corporate capitalism to successfully care for its citizens or even to wage war (as if waging war were a constitutional obligation rather than national expediency) in the most economically wise and efficient manner. The Medicare D Supplement in reality is a massive act of corporate capitalist foolishness birthed by greed and lobby payments - not honest public discourse on the highest public good.
Speaking "capitalistically" and "market-basedly" we do not - when our house catches fire - call the fire department and make arrangements to pay a deductible before they will come. Our taxes have already paid for that.
... or if we hear an intruder in the house, we do not call the police and negotiate a deductible or co-pay term before they come out to keep us safe. Our taxes pay for that.
... Why the hell do we do that to ourselves regarding our most precious personal asset - health?
"Because taxes could go up," defenders of the market-based capitalist religion declare. To which even non-MBA's like me who have spent hundreds of hours at the kitchen table working out budgets reply,
"It's all in the budget priorities. We must be spending too much somewhere else, eh? Like perhaps on a paranoid and insecure but profit-driven wide-eyed defense and weapons industry?
The assumption is false and we are asleep. Market-based corporatists want us to stay that way.
It is all about bull shit ...the selling of bull shit ... the buying of bull shit ... the lying about bull shit ... and the harming of an entire society by overdosing on bull shit.
When a wild-eyed elderly woman comes into my office saying she's heard terrible horror stories about socialized medicine in Canada I'm ready to throw up or throw my hands in the air.
Think about it.
Great Britain apparently (at least per Sicko) launched their version of socialized medicine right after WW II when they were not far removed from financial insolvency. They ain't even come close to scrapping it.
Why not?
Well hell, because maybe what they've got - what Canada and France have - works fine enough that their national public good and well-being far outweighs whatever problems come up. Regardless of American corporate lies, those problems certainly are not the nightmares our lobbied-and-prompted politicians, insurers and care providers constantly try to scare us with.
How DO they pay for it? With taxes of course.
Why COULDN'T we pay for it with taxes? We could, of course.
We might have to give up or cut back to reasonable levels some other kind of spending - like defense.
Of course we could and of course we should.
Those opposed to cutting back military spending are not driven by fear of a massively global military monolith with resources approaching a trillion dollars and planning an all-out attack and invasion of our homeland. They are driven by a fear of loss of profits.
Get the terrorists yes ... but with honest police work and funded actions appropriate to legitimate need as a wise economic response.
But do we really need full-monte massive military assaults with nukes, 37 divisions plus the 4th, 5th , 6th, 7th, and 8th Fleets and the 98th, 99th and 100th Bomber Wings ... hell no!!
But of course that's another story to debate elsewhere whenever we get serious about sourcing and budgeting much more important issues, like being 37th in global health effectiveness.
Besides, that attack and invasion has already occurred.
It began years ago when we naively swallowed corporate bait and philosophy - without any critical thinking or understanding that lobbyists were serious (they always MEANT business) - hook, line and sinker.
We were attacked and invaded by corporate sharks who only got more openly savage about it after 2000 when Dirty Dingus McBush open the trapdoors and helped the corporate Trojan Horse drop a massive pile of stinking biscuits smack dab in every living room and homeless shelter in America.
So in terms of market-based medicine for America, our medicine-based marketing sharks would be the ones in ICU if we ever woke up,
if we ever narrowed our wide-eyed naïveté
and went shopping for a better system.
[UPDATE - Excerpts from Editorial in Today's (Sun 8/12/07) New York Times]
NYT:Editorial
World’s Best Medical Care?
Michael Moore struck a nerve in his new documentary, “Sicko,” when he extolled the virtues of the government-run health care systems in France, England, Canada and even Cuba while deploring the failures of the largely private insurance system in this country. There is no question that Mr. Moore overstated his case by making foreign systems look almost flawless. But there is a growing body of evidence that, by an array of pertinent yardsticks, the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care.
... Insurance coverage. All other major industrialized nations provide universal health coverage, and most of them have comprehensive benefit packages with no cost-sharing by the patients. The United States, to its shame, has some 45 million people without health insurance and many more millions who have poor coverage.
... Access ... Citizens abroad often face long waits before they can get to see a specialist or undergo elective surgery. Americans typically get prompter attention ... The real barriers here are the costs facing low-income people without insurance or with skimpy coverage. ... even Americans with above-average incomes find it more difficult than their counterparts abroad to get care on nights or weekends without going to an emergency room.
... Fairness. The United States ranks dead last on almost all measures of equity because we have the greatest disparity in the quality of care given to richer and poorer citizens.
... We rank near the bottom in healthy life expectancy at age 60, and 15th among 19 countries in deaths from a wide range of illnesses that would not have been fatal if treated with timely and effective care. The good news is that we have done a better job than other industrialized nations in reducing smoking. The bad news is that our obesity epidemic is the worst in the world.
... Quality. In a comparison with five other countries, the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States first in providing the “right care” for a given condition as defined by standard clinical guidelines and gave it especially high marks for preventive care, like Pap smears and mammograms to detect early-stage cancers, and blood tests and cholesterol checks for hypertensive patients. But we scored poorly in coordinating the care of chronically ill patients, in protecting the safety of patients, and in meeting their needs and preferences, which drove our overall quality rating down to last place.
... With health care emerging as a major issue in the presidential campaign and in Congress, it will be important to get beyond empty boasts that this country has “the best health care system in the world” and turn instead to fixing its very real defects. The main goal should be to reduce the huge number of uninsured, who are a major reason for our poor standing globally. But there is also plenty of room to improve our coordination of care, our use of computerized records, communications between doctors and patients, and dozens of other factors that impair the quality of care. The world’s most powerful economy should be able to provide a health care system that really is the best.
