Socialize It

The last great Republican, Abe Lincoln, said the nation needed, “…to care for him who shall have born the battle and his widow and his orphan."

 President Lincoln was talking about socialized medicine for veterans.  In fact, he rattled off a list of a number of functions a government should provide for its people.

 The biggest problem with Obama’s proposed healthcare solution is that he’s dropped a single-payer, government-run option from the list – it’s not socialized enough.  That’s right, I’m talking all out socialist, government-run healthcare, not an insurance plan or government managed HMO type thing, but actual public healthcare, just like VHA here in America, and like just about every other civilized country in the world.   Not only do effective government-run programs exist as a model for this, but history has taught us that our for-profit system doesn’t serve the vast majority of users very well.

 Before you go repeating what someone told you about how the government can’t run anything, consider a few real life examples: 

1.  VHA – the nation’s highest quality, most efficient healthcare system

2.  The USPS – still the cheapest way to get a letter across the nation and self-sustaining

3.  public schools

4.  roads, bridges, electrical, water and sewer infrastructure

 Not only have these government created, run or maintained examples served us well, but no one has come along offering a better option at a better price.  I hear the murmurs already about how crappy our public school system is and yet its graduates are still the best educated people in the world.  It’s the one thing immigrants still come to this country to take part in.  Despite all the whining about it, no private options, charter schools or other wacko reform movements have come along to successfully replace it on a massive scale.  Sure there have been exceptions here and there, but none have played by the same rules, and served the massive range of students that the public schools have served.  

 I can also hear the murmurs about how crazy USPS employees are but that’s a cheap argument based on anecdotal incidents.  In fact, the USPS example also demonstrates that public and private entities can work together in a free market.  FedEx, UPS and other parcel delivery and expediting services coexist quite nicely with the USPS.  So the argument against that is a fallacy as well. 

 Once you cut through the bull you have to admit that a for-profit system of healthcare will do exactly as it has and get us exactly what we’ve got: max profit, minimal healthcare, minimal control, minimal choice.  It would be easier to accept if any of that profit went to or if any of the actual decision making on how to spend it was actually made by health care professionals but no, sadly, that’s not the case.  It goes to insurance companies, claims processing companies, drug companies, who have shown us over the last 20 years where their priorities are.  Hint:  It’s not keeping you healthy.

 I’m not opposed to anyone earning a profit, but if conservatives who cite Adam Smith as their bright star of free markets and laissez-faire would actually read what he said, they’d understand that he too advocated for government-provided services.  He noted a distinction between services and products and often favored governments as providers of commonly used services.  The idea that government should be the provider of certain services is rarely questioned when it comes to things that the right doesn’t want to have to pay for: cleaning up their environmental messes, hiding their profits offshore, building roads, power grids and other infrastructure that allows them to get rich.

 So if government sponsored services like roads and other infrastructure are best left to government, then why is healthcare any different.  Consider the approach to healthcare most providers/insurance companies take today:  sell services that maximize profit in the short term without regard to a patient’s health in the long term.  After all, the typical patient’s long term health will be someone else’s problem as soon as he loses his job or changes jobs and falls under a new insurance provider.  Under this model, providers have no incentive to invest in long term wellness, computerized records, or even fixing the obvious flaws in their own systems. 

 A single payer on the other hand knows that the overall wellness of a patient over the long haul will be cheaper for them AND better for the patient. 

 I’m not saying we should hand over VHA care to all Americans, but it does serve as a model of how healthcare could work in this country – the only remaining developed country (and the richest) where public healthcare is not an option.  So before you believe the horror stories about public healthcare, make sure you’ve also heard from the satisfied customers. 

 VHA isn’t the only socialized medicine in America that customers are happy with.  Here’s an article titled, “Hey, Don’t Save Me From Government Healthcare,” by an actual Army troop who claims that his government-run TriCare plan is great:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/hey-dont-save-me-from-gov_b_264098.html 

 Don’t buy the crap about Canada or England either.  For every horror story anecdote you hear repeated over and over, there are thousands of quietly content customers.  We even sneak into Canada and Mexico to use their pharmacies!  How pathetic must our open market be? And both countries rank well above America when it comes to the healthcare available to their citizens.

 Remember, the status quo being defended right now is a system that was ranked 37th in the world… just two countries ahead of Cuba… by the World Health Organization.  CUBA!  That’s right, the richest nation in the world can’t even provide healthcare –for those who still can afford it- better than Fidel Castro has provided the people of Cuba. And that’s what we’re defending now?!  Here are some other places who rank well ahead of us:  Oman, Costa Rica, Columbia!?  Malta, France… you know how we love to hate them.  I guess we hate them for their healthcare freedom!

 Listen, the right will tell you that this is just one more attempt for government to interfere with and control your lives and force you to give up specific freedoms.  Don’t believe the concept and don’t believe the confessor.  They’ll quote an old Reagan speech wherein the actor/president spelled out this very sales pitch.  But think about the freedoms we’ve given up, or rather, that the right has given up for us.  We gave up the right to private phone calls overseas under the right’s rule.  We gave up the right of habeus corpus under the right’s rule.  Some Americans gave up the right to a speedy trial or the protections against illegal search, seizure and imprisonment.  We gave our lives over to the nation’s largest corporations.  Then their CEOs, under reduced regulation at the hands of the right, ran off with our life savings.  Let’s not forget that it was still under the right’s rule that we then PAID for this privilege with the first wave of bailouts!  ALL under the right’s rule.

I’m not sure what kind of freedom President Reagan was talking about Perhaps it comes from the same mythical source as the right’s arbitrary ideas on morality and family values.  Perhaps he meant the freedom to go bankrupt the next time you get sick.  Perhaps he meant the freedom to buy your drugs in Canada – no, wait, W made that illegal too!

 When it comes to healthcare, thanks to the current system, more than half of the people in this country are just one serious illness, one accident, one extended hospital stay away from bankruptcy.  Don’t let that happen to you and don’t be fooled into thinking it can’t.  If you don’t like the current president’s plan, and let me here repeat: I don’t either – it’s not socialist enough!  Then get to work on fixing it, but don’t buy the bullshit that the right has spread only because they can’t be bothered to come up with something better. 

Luth

Out