I very much enjoyed President Obama's address on health care. To be honest, I also enjoyed the Republican's generally snarky and juvenile response to Obama's eloquent and reasoned speech on the most adult of topics: the physical health of the US citizenry. Even taking into consideration that some of the antics were pure political theater, the guffawing and ill-drawn placards suggested an immaturity that ought to not be displayed in public by paid professionals, much less in the halls of Congress by our most senior political representatives. Seeing grown adult humans make such an embarrassing public spectacle of themselves is too amusing to not be enjoyed...until I remember that the topic at hand was health care.
But what the hell, if they don't take it seriously, why should I? Quick, someone grab a Sharpie, scribble some shit on this pamphlet and wave it around--it'll be just like the homecoming game my senior year in high school! Defense!
My favorite part of the speech was this:
"Our collective failure to meet this challenge -- year after year, decade after decade -- has led us to the breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can't get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can't afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or too expensive to cover.
We are the only democracy -- the only advanced democracy on Earth -- the only wealthy nation -- that allows such hardship for millions of its people. There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone."
I like that the President pointed out that we are the only country who even turns this into a debate. Everyone else sees this as a no-brainer. Only in America are our politicians too busy making political sport to take seriously the health of their constituents.
Here is a short essay I wrote on the subject last year:
Since I awoke this morning the US government has tried to protect me in dozens of ways. They have spent my money to protect me. They spent my money to regulate the smoke detectors in my house. They spent my money to vet the cereal, milk, tea and juice I had for breakfast. They spent my money to enforce speed limits, seat-belt laws and safe-driving laws during my drive to work. They spent my money to prevent me the opportunity of buying heroin or cocaine on the way to work, and spent my money to build prisons to incarcerate me in were I to attempt to buy them anyway. I raise these points to show the government is not shy about spending my money or working to protect me from the vagaries of fate, yet for some reason when the subject of healthcare comes up they become the spendthrift libertarian who couldn’t possibly spare the money or wouldn’t deign to interfere in such a personal matter.
Over 45 million Americans, or nearly 20% percent of the population under the age of 65, were without health insurance in 2007 (National Coalition on Health Care, 2009). More than 8 in 10 of those who were uninsured came from working families (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2008). All together, according to Families USA, “89.6 million people under the age of 65 were uninsured for some or all of” 2006-2007 (Families USA, 2007). Many of the uninsured were the most vulnerable among us, with the National Coalition on Health Care stating that nearly 11% of children in the US were uninsured in 2007 (National Coalition on Health Care, 2009). All this comes about because currently it is the policy of the federal government and the California state government to not offer universal healthcare to its citizens, but to only offer limited, means-tested coverage administered through a program known as Medicaid, passed as Title XIX of the Social Security Act in 1965.
Medicaid, and its sister program, Medicare, which provides health insurance benefits for the elderly, were part of the 1965 act modifying the Social Security Act, itself originally passed in 1935. Unfortunately, Medicaid was never intended to provide for every American: “Medicaid does not provide medical assistance for all poor persons. Even under the broadest provisions of the Federal statute (except for emergency services for certain persons), the Medicaid program does not provide health care services, even for very poor persons, unless they are in one of the designated eligibility groups (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2009).” In this sense, Medicaid can’t be faulted as a failure of implementation, but of vision.
When I do budgeting with very-low income families we don’t discuss whether or not the family needs shelter. We don’t discuss how much money we could save if the children went without clothing, or if the kids should have all their teeth pulled to save on dental care. Certain expenses are taken for granted, and accepted as the burden adults bear to provide the basic necessities for their families. I’ve not quoted any estimates for how much Universal Healthcare would cost the taxpayer because it doesn’t really belong in the discussion of whether every American should have basic health services. It is a question of priority and common decency, not a cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis enters the calculus when we decide which Universal Healthcare system to utilize.
Works Cited
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2009). Overview of Medicaid. Retrieved February 4, 2009, from US Department of Health and Human Services: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicaidGenInfo/
Families USA. (2007, September). Wrong Direction:One Out of Three. Retrieved January 30, 2009, from Families USA: http://familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/wrong-direction.pdf
National Coalition on Health Care. (2009, January 30). Health Insurance Coverage. Retrieved January 30, 2009, from National Coalition on Health Care: http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2008, October). The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts About Americans without Health Insurance.
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