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Life is a journey; enjoy the trip! I wake up happy everyday and try to share that with a smile to everyone I see.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Final Project - Healthcare: It's our life, it's our right!

It's no secret that healthcare costs are spiraling out of control in this country. On average, we now spend more per person on health care than both food and housing. Insurance premiums are multiplying much faster than inflation, which prevents economic growth and leaves businesses with less money to give raises or hire more workers. While the quality and availability of medical care in the United States remains among the best in the world, many wonder whether we'd be better off adopting a universal government-controlled health care system like the one used in Canada. It is unconscionable that in our rich country—the only industrialized nation without universal health coverage—millions, including children, are uninsured, and, senior citizens are often forced to agonize between paying for extremely costly medicine or food.

Healthcare will grab more and more headlines in the U.S. in the coming months. Any service that is on track to consume 40 percent of the gross national product of the world's largest economy by the year 2050 will be hard to ignore. Business management already feels the effects of healthcare costs more acutely than most consumers. Several recent studies and proposals shed light on the problem and possible solutions. They leave us with questions, too. Americans need to come to grips with the fact that government intervention into healthcare is not the answer and is, in fact, responsible for causing much of the sharp rise in healthcare costs in the United States, which has the highest healthcare costs per capita in the world. Because many of the mechanisms causing healthcare costs to rise are fairly straightforward and within the abilities of Congress to remedy, this revelation could actually be considered good news.

To put things in perspective, “U.S. healthcare currently costs about $2 trillion per year. Of this, more than $600 billion (31 percent) is never seen by recipients. It goes for administration. On a per capita basis, it is roughly $280 billion more than is spent for administration in the other twenty-one countries whose life expectancies exceed those in the U.S., all of whom have some form of taxpayer-financed, single-payer system, the kind that used to be referred to by detractors as "socialized medicine." Worse yet, the current system leaves more than 40 million Americans without health insurance.” Because many are not employed or have very low incomes, programs that provide incentives through employers and tax relief don't help them. With this much room for possible improvement, the incentives should be sufficient to foster changes in behavior.

Health insecurity is not confined to one part of the population. It is experienced by all Americans. Those without insurance as well as those who risk losing coverage; those who are impoverished as well as those with higher incomes who experience catastrophic costs; those who are sick or injured as well as those who are just one sickness or injury away from financial calamity. As health care costs have skyrocketed and the proportion of Americans with stable benefits has eroded, health insecurity has become a shared American experience, felt by those who thought they had it made as well as those just struggling to get by.

If employers and corporations are not somehow regulated or legislated to provide healthcare to its employees and dependents then wouldn’t these same households move into poverty? Then requiring government assistance and healthcare? There was a time, when a working class family could survive and provide their families with healthcare, a home, and even private schooling if they chose. In the last twenty years the working class has been targeted for elimination in my opinion. If employers provide neither a living wage nor benefits then are they not behind the increased government dependency? Do capitalist, the wealthy, and middle class actually subjugate the working class to increased governmental dependency?

Personally, I’d like to see our government provide funding and management for all the reasonable quality improvement and cost control strategies presented in the candidate comparison web site. I’d like this to be done in the most effective and efficient way possible, with all government agencies involved being closely watched and scrutinized by an independent oversight organization whose allegiance is to the consumer.

Many of the problems with today's healthcare system, including high costs and large numbers of uninsured Americans, stem from government involvement in healthcare, dating from World War II to the present. In his book “What Has Government Done to Our Healthcare?”, Terree P. Wasley notes that during WWII, the federal government instituted price and wage fixing, while raising income taxes to pay for the war. At the same time, the IRS "ruled that the purchase of health insurance for workers was a legitimate cost of doing business and could be deducted from taxable business income. The IRS also ruled that workers did not have to include the value of health insurance benefits in calculating their taxable income. These IRS rulings were a giant tax incentive for both employers and taxpayers, and they did much to institutionalize employer-provided healthcare as part of the system." After the war, price and wage freezes were removed, but employers kept the tax deductions. These tax breaks for the purchase of insurance were not applied to individuals who bought their own health insurance, thereby solidifying employer-provided insurance.

As “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs” states: “People are motivated by basic needs for hunger and thirst and comfort first, followed by the need for security, then the need for love and belonging followed by the need for esteem and recognition, also aestheticism and learning and finally the need to use ones giftings and abilities for personal fulfillment”. Where do we stand in America today? Our security has been shaken to its foundations by extremists, our very basic needs are threatened by an economy that has failed us; divorce and homelessness has devastated the family.

If the people are healthy then they can think and work effectively. That has in my mind pushed healthcare to the forefront. With all these major issues in the United States today, first and foremost we need a strong healthy population without concern for their basic well-being. If people aren’t healthy it doesn’t matter how much opportunity you provide. I am convinced that the economy would have a positive shift with people being relieved of the expense and devastation that comes with inadequate healthcare. National enemies are often not the flesh and blood kind. Think tornados, hurricanes and disease. If there was a plague in the nation, we would need to address it with full force.

I applaud Hillary Clinton for being the first person to propose universal healthcare - free healthcare for everyone. Unfortunately, she was defeated because of all the money involved. The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have many highly paid, former Congressmen, lobbying in Washington, DC to push the insurance and pharmaceutical company’s agenda. This makes it almost impossible for Congress to change our healthcare policies. The United States Congress will never change our healthcare system to offer universal healthcare. The only way our healthcare system will change is if Americans take to the streets in masses and protest and vote out every member of Congress who doesn't support universal healthcare. The United States government should benchmark the healthcare systems of Canada, France and England and develop our own universal healthcare system. It’s the right thing to do! Every American regardless of "anything" should have free healthcare. Every healthcare insurance company should be dismantled and every pharmaceutical company regulated by the government. It’s time for the United States government to take over our healthcare system and provide free healthcare for all!

I think healthcare should be virtually free, as it is in most other countries past the state of semi-industrialization. It would be funded through taxes and through increased efficiencies in the system which other countries seem to be able to affect but which we seem incapable of accomplishing with profit making entities standing between the care providers and the patients. Until we put our feet down and say "we're not going to take it anymore", the mess will continue - the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies will rake it in, while the poor and middle class will suffer (and in some cases, die) for lack of care. It's up to us.










Frank, Robert H. The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. New York: 2007.


Wasley, Terree P. What Has Government Done to Our Healthcare? Policy Studies Review; Autmn/Winter92, Vol. 11 Issue 3/4, p423-425, 3p


Maslow, Abraham H. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50 (1943):370-96

1 comment:

L'auteur D'Feds said...

Nice job. You said, "In the last twenty years the working class has been targeted for elimination in my opinion." Thank you. Our health is being sold to the health industry, and we aren't doing anything about it. Death benefits are collected by insurance agencies as poor Americans lower the coffins. If you're poor, do we care if you die in the streets? If so, we need to speak up, as you have done with this post. Nice Job.