Opinion
Socialist direction needed for health care coverage
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It has become pedestrian to say it, but I will say it nonetheless: It is a moral abomination that 47 million people are without health care in the richest country in the world.
Wisconsin boasts of one of the best health care systems in the country, but even here, things are far from ideal. According to a report conducted by the Department of Health and Family Services, almost 500,000 Wisconsinites (9 percent) were without health care for all or part of 2003. Last year, more than 13,000 bankruptcies were filed due to medical bills. The situation is growing worse, with health care costs rapidly increasing and more companies threatening to drop coverage.
The obvious solution for Wisconsin is to join the rest of the industrialized world and adopt socialized medicine, either through a single-payer or — like Western Europe — a two-tier system (one public, one private). This would fulfill the hopes of the "New Deal" Democrats of the 1930s, the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Medical Association.
Socialized medical systems have empirically proven themselves better than our for-profit system: The United States has the lowest life expectancy in the industrialized world. Beyond this simple fact, the debate should be closed; human welfare is qualitatively more important than ideology or money.
Still, it is important to note that bureaucratic overhead and advertising make American health care unnecessarily expensive. According to a recent Washington Post report, the United States spends about twice as much on health care than its European counterparts.
The essential problem with American health care is that the profit motive is the fundamental impulse of the entire system. Big Pharma is, quite simply, pure evil, concealing adverse drug effects, jacking up prices, researching only the profitable and — perhaps most disturbingly — puppeteering the Food and Drug Administration all the while.
Doctors and hospitals are forced into the organism as well, receiving kickbacks for prescribing the right drugs, overlooking expensive medical problems and accepting only those with the right insurance.
Wisconsin workers should accept nothing short of a complete elimination of the private sector in their health care. Socialized medicine is cheap, fair, universal and long overdue.
With that said, it is not realistic to expect it in the near future, regardless of the fight progressives put up. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, nearly $2 out of every $3 contributed to Assembly Republicans from 1999 to 2006 have come from special interests that oppose the "Healthy Wisconsin" proposal — an initiative introduced by Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. In this context, the proposal, while hardly radical, will be difficult to get through the Assembly (it's already passed in the Senate). Socialized medicine is not even up for discussion.
Mr. Doyle's plan, then, may not be the most desirable, but is it worthy of support? Given the range of possibilities, I must reluctantly acquiesce with the governor. Like most proposals that combine the public and private sectors, it is horrendously complicated (although this is partly the fault of state Republicans, who have deliberately misled the public — at the behest of their corporate donors, no doubt).
It involves a 9-12 percent tax increase on employer payrolls and a 4 percent tax increase on workers' wages in order to provide health insurance to (almost) everyone in the state, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In turn, employees would choose from different state health insurance plans. Aside from covering more people, the plan's main advantages include increased benefits, such as mental health coverage, and lower costs for patients, doctors and hospitals.
Admittedly, Healthy Wisconsin is bold — by American standards, anyway. Its progressive nature, combined with its sheer potential to become law, warrants its support from progressive Wisconsinites. The downside is that it fails to eliminate all the baggage that comes with corporate control of health care, since the private sector is still heavily involved.
The urgency of the health care problem means that immediate action is necessary. Every day, people die because they can't afford coverage, even as the pharmaceutical companies make record profits. Healthy Wisconsin is, at the very least, a step in the right direction. The next step is socialized medicine.
Kyle Szarzynski (kszarzynski@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in Spanish and history.
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hm. it's not really socialized medicine. Healthy Wisconsin doesn't change the nature of medical care delivery, only the way you are covered by insurance.
Where are you going to find doctors willing to work for less than fair market value than they would get in the private sector? The obvious trade-off for health care that is "Socialized ... cheap, fair, universal and long overdue." is sub-par care provided by doctors not "good" enough to land a job in the private sector.
Also, how do you address the issue of how happy neighboring states will be to accept the exodus of the small-medium businesses that flee Wisconsin due to an additional 9-12 percent employer payroll tax?? Or an additional 4 percent employee payroll tax on top of the immense taxes the citizens of this state already pay.
How happy are people going to be when businesses jack up their prices to compensate for the additional taxes levied by Doyle's dim-witted plan?
Socialized medicine and health care is a recipe for disaster.
"Big Pharma is, quite simply, pure evil, concealing adverse drug effects, jacking up prices, researching only the profitable and -- perhaps most disturbingly -- puppeteering the Food and Drug Administration all the while."
The USA is but one country. If US pharmaceutical companies are pure evil, and only focus on the profitable, why haven't European pharma companies and European governments come up with many good meds lately? It would seem that according to your logic, they should.
A socialized structure for our health care system might be a good idea, but only if that's as far as it goes. I don't want to live under a socialist government.
If you think health care is expensive now just wait until it's "free".
This will bankrupt the state. Working people and their jobs will leave the state while free loaders will move in.
When the tax-payers are all gone who will be left to pay the bills for the tax-eaters?
"I don't want to live under a socialist government."
That would be the worst thing to ever happen to you. You'd live in filthy squalor like the French, British, Canadians, and most of the civilized world. No thanks, you say, you'll keep as close to Mexican "capitalism" as you can get. !Viva la Estados Unidos!
How about this: Free health care as long as you're employed. This takes pressure off employers to pay for health care (this would help encourage employers to hire) and encourages unemployed people to work. It might not be the job you want, but at least you're able to "earn" health care.
1) The problem with the current system is that you can work full-time and still not have health care. That's not fair.
2) Another problem is that if you are unemployed you DO have free, socialized health care. That's not fair to those working (see #1).
3) Freeloaders are a problem, so VALID ID is essential. Look at your social security card; why is it just a piece of paper with a type-written number on it? Your school ID has more security measures.
"No thanks, you say, you'll keep as close to Mexican "capitalism" as you can get. !Viva la Estados Unidos!"
Dude, step away from the bong. Socialism as a form of government has failed miserably everywhere it has ever been tried. It's OK if certain government programs are administered that way, but an all-encompassing socialist structure never lasted very long. Look at history. And Mexican style capitalism, you say? What's the comparison? Mexico sucks so bad no one wants to liver there anymore! If it weren't for the generosity of the US-letting illegals into the country-Mexicans would starve. Are they socialist? Capitalist? Or maybe it's just because the idiots running Mexico are so corrupt?
Considering the fact that the richest guy on the planet right now is a Mexican, I don't see where they're doing so bad. And if a Mexican can fork over $40,000 to a coyote to get him across the border, then they can't be that poor!
9:35 our capitalism worked perfectly when Europe stood in the post-war rubble of the 1950's, but America's shine has since past. This country is falling apart.
Maybe we need to cut taxes, maybe we need to raise taxes, but our current path is not the impressive "beacon on a hill" that it once was. Developing countries are looking to places like Ireland for examples of good economies, not the United States.
The more socialist we become, the more we head toward failure. We were the beacon when we were least socialist. The state of the country, which is not as bad as some would like you to believe, is in decline only because we want the government to take care of us, cradle to grave, as opposed to taking care of ourselves.
Check that, 3:33, government wants to take you from conception to grave. Without the nanny state, at least half of this country could not get past its daily task of drooling and mouth breathing.
In that sense, you are correct; the strong and wealthy have not crushed "the little guy" into extinction and the natural evolution to an American super-society has failed. If it weren't for the poor, everyone would be rich... right?
Maybe Wisconsin can have it just like England?
***
Like many of the patients featured in Michael Moore's Sicko, Wilson, who claimed to have never made any money in the music business, couldn't convince his insurance provider, Britain's National Health Service, to cover the cost of an his prescription drug regimen.
"I've never paid for private healthcare because I'm a socialist. Now I find you can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal."
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122009.html
Or Scotland:
CANCER patients are still waiting up to seven months for treatment.
Patients are supposed to be treated within 62 days of urgent referral.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news/tm_headline=220-day-cancer-wait-hell%26method=full%26objectid=19639291%26siteid=66633-name_page.html
***
What?? This is supposed to be some marque of quality? If a doctor finds I have operable cancer today, in all likelihood I'm having surgery in TWO days, not sixty-two!
Oh, at a free lunch it often happens that there's nothing to actually eat.
"in all likelihood I'm having surgery in TWO days, not sixty-two!"
Hey, bro, you haven't been in touch with our health system in a long time have you? Try this: call your family doc and try to set up an appointment for a physical. He'll get to you in a MONTH or two.
You also have to admit that we have a serious problem with hospital staffing. There is something called a "nursing shortage." This shortage is not just limited to nursing, so you're suggestion that our health system is gum drops and unicorns is laughable.
I took the HMO alternative - I can see a doctor same day - always.
Maybe we can import some English nurses?
***
Also from the Telegraph: nurses face joblessness by NHS budget squeeze; the elderly are "becoming increasingly disabled because of a lack of basic care to help them look after their feet"; list of hospitals threatened with closure in budget cutbacks; and NHS dentists are often more expensive than their private counterparts.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122091.html
"NHS dentists are often more expensive than their private counterparts."
Is "NSH Private counterparts" a euphemism for "Mexican in a van?"
I don't think that there's much "Mexican in a van?" action in England.
OK, Romanian in a Van. The Mexicans of Europe.
I suggest they build a fence to solve that problem. Even better, an "iron curtain."
I suspect that "NHS dentists" are more expensive because they work for the government Bureaucracy - not because of their nationality.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is unforgiving and implacable.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
"in all likelihood I'm having surgery in TWO days, not sixty-two!"
unless you're poor and uninsured, then you'll probably rot from the inside out and die.
"unless you're poor and uninsured, then you'll probably rot from the inside out and die."
So what's yer point? If you're poor and uninsured you're screwed. DIAF
The National Health Service...
Hospital closures and cuts 'will cost lives'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/25/nhospital125.xml
Those who complain about the wait times for some procedures in Canada and other nations with socialized medicine are missing the big picture. The US spends more per capita than any other nation on earth on healthcare, yet the WHO ranks our total levels of health 72nd in the world, compared to Canada at 35th (while spending far less).
Adopting a Canadian model wholesale would certainly result in some significant drawbacks for American healthcare, but I, for one, would rather enjoy the higher life expectancy and far lower costs of their socialized system than risk having no healthcare at all in the US.
Canada, Europe, etc force the drug companies to sell them drugs at below cost. The result is that we, in the US, pay for the majority of drug research in the world. if we go the way of Canada, you'd either bankrupt every drug company or kill drug research. Then you have systems like the British NHS where the majority of prostate cancer patients die. That's an incredible downgrade in service for the great majority of us.
I am confused here, please excuse my ignorance. I just had a discussion with a nurse who was against socialized medicine. He claimed that under a socialist system only the wealthy would have decent medical coverage. Doesn�t the socialist system provide coverage for everybody? Wouldn�t a capitalist system be more likely to favor the wealthy?
I have a condition called Barrett�s Esophagus. It is a precancerous condition and until recently the only treatment options were to be scoped and observed for cancer to develop. Well I am a very straight edged person and don�t like the idea of taking any drugs at all. The doctor wants me to take prilosec every day for the rest of my life and be scoped yearly. According to Prescription for Nutritional Healing, �It has been suggested that long-term use of these medications may lead to damage to the stomach lining, thus increasing the risk of benign or malignant tumors�. I have since found a �cure� that is almost 100 percent effective. It is called the Halo treatment. My doctor is reluctant to give me a referral. Are referrals more common under a socialist system?
Also a previous poster commented that he can get into his HMO on the same day he calls. I can get into an emergency room the same day but it often takes months before I can schedule a physical. What is the secret to getting in the same day?