President Bush may be the only American in complete denial of this nation's looming health care crisis. "People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room," he told a Cleveland audience in July.
And people are heading to the emergency room — not surprising, considering the 47 million Americans without health insurance — and the results have been devastating. Overflowing emergency rooms are severely straining hospitals, causing them to lose money and personnel, which is helping drive up insurance rates, which is inspiring businesses to flee, which is causing people to lose their jobs and, in turn, their health care. When these people get sick or injured, they head back to the ER, and the vicious cycle continues.
The forecast for health care in this state is bleak, with costs 26 percent higher than the national average, and spending is projected to nearly double over the next decade.
Senate Democrats presented Healthy Wisconsin, an initiative that taxes both employee wages and employer payrolls to extend comprehensive health care coverage to virtually all Wisconsin citizens. The plan has been bashed for its flaws, which include failing to relieve small businesses struggling to provide health care and a loophole that adds an extra tax for Wisconsinites that work out of state.
Yet, Healthy Wisconsin's main blemish is that, while publicly funded, it is still privately run. Therefore, it fails, like the various reforms presented by the 2008 presidential candidates, to strike at the heart of our health care system's fundamental problem. In the U.S., health care is a $2-trillion industry whose central aim is profit, not providing equal, adequate, and comprehensive health care access. This doesn't mean the involved corporations are inherently evil, only that their inherent interests contradict the purpose of health care systems. While it would seem logical to explore expansive, publicly-run health coverage, Republicans, and many Democrats, have helped warp citizens' perception of such systems. Ironically, the main arguments against universal health care highlight problems that already plague our current system:
Businesses will jack up prices to compensate for the additional taxes.
They already do. For years, businesses have responded to rising insurance premiums by offering lower wage increases to employees, while adding the cost of providing health insurance to the prices of their products and services. At least with universal coverage, citizens know they're receiving a benefit when paying extra for something.
Citizens will struggle with the tax burden.
Many Americans have sacrificed everything to pay for health care. According to the Census Bureau, more than half of the 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the United States each year are a result of medical bills. Even well-off citizens are one major health crisis away from losing everything — and probably wouldn't mind paying a little extra to gain greater financial security.
Quality of health services will suffer.
Ah, the infamous hyperbole about endless waiting times and catastrophic treatment errors. Such concerns would be valid if our current system didn't set the bar so low. Between 6,000 and 9,000 people die each year in the United States from treatment injuries and prescriptions alone, while more than 100,000 perish from accidental injuries and medication errors in hospitals.
Universal care promotes bloated government and wasteful spending.
Look at the massive waste currently produced by the insurance bureaucracy, including the cost of administrative and billing personnel: insurers' costs for marketing, lobbying, campaign contributions, broker sales commissions, exuberant executive salaries and shareholder profits. What if all that money was spent on patient care?
But it's socialism!
We rely on "socialism" for other vital functions — no one argues that we should privatize Madison's police and fire services or complains about having to chip in to keep their cities clean, their roads paved or their public transportation systems running efficiently and cheaply.
Of course, universal health care would not be "free." Nothing in this country is. Roads aren't free. Police protection is not free. Going to a public high school is not free. Every American pays for the use of these collective services and virtually every American uses them. Unfortunately, the system is perceived in our society as being a "burden" instead of an investment that has helped build the interstate highway system, the Internet, airline services and our communications system. Quality infrastructure allows people to use the free market to make an adequate living in this country. And taxes finance it.
Like quality infrastructure, good health care is fundamental to prospering in America. Taxpayers seem comfortable financing an expensive, exhausting, and controversial "war on terror", when terrorism killed a mere 36 American citizens last year. Meanwhile, an estimated 18,000 people die every year from a lack of medical coverage. We need to reconsider our definition of "national security" and direct our tax dollars towards protection from what threatens us most.
Adam Lichtenheld ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and African studies.
