I was visiting with a relative the other day who was about to retire from a state job, but would not be old enough for Medicare. It was explained to me that he could continue his insurance from the state for $500 a month. Now that is a lot of money, but almost seems cheap in today’s health care market.
A little math will tell you that $500 a month is $6,000 a year. Next add in your deductibles and co-pays, and it would not surprise me if the price for his health care came to $8,000 to $10,000 a year. And that is if he does not have any major hospitalizations or illness.
In my mind, the discussion led to health care reform. He seemed opposed to it, mainly because he felt with an aging population we were just pushing the costs off on the next generation. Then he made a comment that bothered me at the time, but the more I thought about it, really begin to floor me, “We want what we want.”
I do no think he meant it that way, but that almost implies that health care is a luxury item, an item for disposable income. I can think of a few health care issues (vanity plastic surgery), but generally in a non hunter-gatherer society I am not buying that health care is something we “want”. My personal stance is that it should be a basic service like police protection or fire protection. It is something we all band together to pay for, because in the long run we all benefit from it. 99.99% of us cannot afford to build an interstate between two cities, but most of us enjoy the benefit of the shared expense.
His argument about pushing the cost off to the next generation does not wash with me either. The argument is that aging population results in smaller pool of actual working stiffs supporting the system. While there is some merit to this argument, what is happening now is that eventually no one will be able to afford health care except the wealthy. The current system make our companies uncompetitive in the world markets. It also forces unnecessary costs and redundancy on us as consumers, and just generally sucks. All sort of costs are being pushed off to the future by our refusing to deal squarely with issues now. Health care is just one of these.
Some of the most coherent voices on these issues can be found at the New York Times editorial page. One recent article by Roger Cohen, The Narcissus Society is really on point. Some quotes from the article really struck me:
“Crunch time has come on a question central to the nation’s future, where an acknowledgment is needed that, when it comes to health, we’re all in this together. Pooling the risk among everybody is the most efficient way to forge a healthier society. That’s what other developed societies do. And they don’t have 30 million plus uninsured. “
“When it comes to health it makes sense to involve government, which is accountable to the people, rather than corporations, which are accountable to shareholders.”
“The public option, not dead, would amount to recognition of shared interest in each other’s health and of the need to use America’s energies and resources better. It would involve 300 million people linking arms.”
It is way past time that we begin to focus on people instead of corporations. Not everything should be about making a profit and health care should be at the top of this list. The government already administers about half the health care in this country, and they do it fairly efficiently. There will always be the greedy among us. They should not be allowed to dictate the terms of life to the rest of us. It is time we linked arms.
Beautifully said.