Universal Health Care
"People who say they don't have time to take care of themselves will soon discover
they're spending all their time being sick."
-- Patricia Alexander, Book of Comforts
"Universal health care is affordable coverage which is extended to all eligible residents of a governmental region. These programs vary widely in their structure and funding mechanisms, particularly the degree to which they are publicly funded. Typically, most health care costs are met by the population via compulsory health insurance or taxation, or a combination of both. The US is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care. according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and others. Universal health care is provided in most countries, in many developing countries, and is the trend world wide.
"Countries with universal health care include: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom."
-Universal Health Care, Wikipedia
I will not tell you that I can even begin to understand the health care system in this country. It is so complicated and bogged down that I doubt anyone could sort it out. What I do know is that everywhere but here, public health care is funded by taxation, private parties and insurance. That money goes directly back into the health care system. Here, health care is funded by unregulated private insurance companies and corporations. We pay these corporations a monthly fee to cover us should we need health care, or even a check-up. If we happen to need this service we have paid thousands of dollars for, we are penalized with rate hikes, denied coverage for a necessary procedure, or dropped all together.
I believe all (or the majority) US insurance corporations work this way.
I have not formally studied business, but is this not a poor business practice? You charge a client a regular fee for a service they may or may not need, but if said client then needs this service they've been paying you for, you either deny their claim, raise their rates or drop them as clients - this is after said client has paid you thousands of dollars, over many years.
This kind of reprehensible practice is not only legal, here in the US, it is required by law in many instances and many states.
This is, by the very definition, extortion. Any other business which conducted themselves in such a manner would very quickly lose all its clients, be shut down by the Better Business Bureau, and would become the target of numerous lawsuits.
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One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small... and the ones that mother gives you,
don't do anything at all. Remember, what the door mouse said; "Keep... your... head!"
--Jefferson Airplane
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Preventative medicine is just starting to gain popularity in America. Traditionally, American doctors and nurses are trained to treat an ailment, not prevent it. But, like I said, this is changing ... slowly.
Most Americans, myself included, have learned to take care of their own health care needs, through fitness, healthy eating, education, etc., either because of a lack of money for health care or a lack of trust of the practices. Necessity has brought us to this point. Many of us learn preventative practices and lifestyles because we know if we get sick, our health care -if received at all before it reaches severe points- will be minimal, the bare necessities. That which is paid for by state or private insurance companies. And if we do recieve the required procedures and treatments, it will leave us with astronomical debt and/or bankruptcy.
As a nation, our general health leaves much to be desired. I believe we are the fattest and sickest industrialized nation in the world. Obesity leads to a host of other diseases. That is a fact. The U.S. lives on pills (prescribed for everything from lack of attention to chronic heartburn to erections), which many of us get from Canada and other countries because pharmaceuticals are rediculously over-priced here. Because of our medical problems - either through lack of funding or lack of knowledge - are not properly dealt with and cured while they are still easily treatable, most patients wait til they are in dire need and go to emergency, where they cannot be denied.
Non-emergency symptoms, and many diseases, are treated with pharmaceuticals rife with dangerous (and sometimes deadly) side-effects, typically this is a lifetime prescription.
The FDA is assigned the responsibility of testing and approving medications before they go on the market to assure that they are safe for Americans to ingest. Yet the plethora of pills being advertised on television have numerous horrendous and deadly side-affects. Yet, they are approved none-the-less!
Why?
Whom is benefiting from these dangerous, band-aid-like, pills?
A couple of the common arguments opposed to universal health care go as follows:
- Health care is not a right. As such, it is not the responsibility of the government to provide health care.
- Universal health care would result in increased wait times, which could result in unnecessary deaths.
"Increased wait times"? Do you mean the more than eight hours or more in the waiting room which is typical? And what about the "unnecessary deaths" of all those dying from treatable, preventable diseases and sicknesses because they have no health care?
Here are a couple of the common arguments for universal health care:
- Health care is a basic human right or entitlement.
- Ensuring the health of all citizens benefits a nation economically.
If this country did have a respectable, universal health care system in place, one which practiced preventative medicine as fervently as it does treating the symptoms, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries would lose a large chunk of their target audience, and an even larger chunk of their very fat bottom line...
So, you tell me: Is it because of the reprehensible insurance and pharmaceutical corporations that we have such an ineffectual health care system? Or is it because of the ineffectual health care system that we have such reprehensible insurance and pharmaceutical corporations?
When I published this piece on HubPages I challenged readers and fellow bloggers to, "Please, convince me, if you can, how assuring the health and fitness of all of a nation's population will not benefit that nation." Below, are a few of the responses I recieved, unedited.
Feedback:
Hi i agree you need a universal health care system. its just plain wierd that you don't have one and so inhumane. in ireland we have a two tier system with private and public hospitals, and private rooms in public hospitals. The system is flawed waiting lists are huge in the public sector but it is better than nothing. personally i have private insurance and i use the public system also ( i pay into that with taxes) --cflynn
Hi CW--Thank you for this hub. I'm without health insurance now that I left the bank, and I've been doing all the preventative maintenance stuff--lots of exercise, watching my weight and my diet, keeping my stress levels low--but I did want to add that when I HAD insurance and got sent to the hospital from work in an ambulance, I still ended up with thousands in bills I was supposed to pay out of pocket and no diagnosis.
I had severe chest pains, nausea, and dizziness and so my boss called an ambulance. My family has a history of heart disease, and I've had this happen once before. The hospital ran lots of tests and sent me home after two days and said they didn't know what was wrong with me but they were pretty sure it wasn't a heart attack, but the tests aren't foolproof, so see your doc and come back if it happens again.
I went to the doctor after that and he spent two minutes in the exam room and wrote me a prescription for a strong sedative and told me it was nonaddictive. I looked it up online and talked to friends and family--it is HIGHLY addictive. He never looked at my tests and would not discuss them with me, said he felt I had muscle pain, but offered no explanation of why he thought this.
I would pay NOT to even let these people near me, that's how inept and harsh it was.
All of this bad care ran about $15,000 (for two days in the hospital, the ambulance, and the bad doc). I read the very next week that one of the most expensive tests run at the hospital has been shown in studies to have no diagnostic or predictive value for heart disease, but it makes hospitals money so they are still selling and using this machine and doing these tests with it.
It was good though, because a light went on in my head that said, "This job is killing me and health insurance will not fix that."
So I left. But just thinking about it still makes me angry.
-- pgrundy
Hi CW, excellent hub. Your description of how our current market-based HC system works is disturbing, but spot on. And the analogy of doing that to clients really hit home with me! No other industry would be able to get away with it.
I am truly hopeful that President Obama will make good on his plan to enroll all Americans in the plan that covers Congress. That would extend the risk pool even more -- so the actuaries who calculate likelihood of payout can be satisfied.
I will tell you that the stress of living in fear of being hospitalized and finding your insurance is not adequate -- or having them cancel you because of a pre-existing condition (don't get me started on that rant) is so stressful that I believe it brings on illness!
Hope you attract some dissenters to the comment thread. --Mighty Mom
Even as a veteran I have tobeg and scrape for simple procedures. And the costs of doing any medical procedure on the open market is bogged down by huge costs. One simple injection in my lower back was over $5,900!!!!!
In Spain where my wife comes from it would be free.
And we boast of being the greatest nation on Earth?
Cheers! --Chef Jeff
I am a 33 year old male living in the southeast region of the United States. I have suffered from an assortment of health issues for a great deal of my life, ranging from severe depression, chronic, intractable back pain (per herniated discs @ H5 and S1, degenerative disc disease, and sciatic nerve compression), severe vascular migraines, and shingles (herpes zoster), with subsequent episodes of mononucleosis, to chronic fatigue syndrome, panic disorder, idiopathic and opioid-induced hypersomnolence, and severe seborrheic dermatitis.
I was an (US) federal employee for more than five (5) years, and had my choice of many different health insurance plans under the Federal Employees Healthcare Benefit Program (FEHB or FEHBP) - none of which I was able to fully utilize simply because I could not afford to meet my deductibles, coinsurance payments, andco-payments. Never mind the fact that many of the treatments recommended to me were either not covered or considered outright "experimental."
Now I find myself disabled and fighting for the previous three years for not only my Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) but also my Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) disability pension. Also, I was only able to continue my enrollment in the federal employee insurance program for a year, so now I am totally uninsured and in a most dire situation.
I have reached the limit of my endurance and hopefulness. When I see a documentary like Sicko, I wish so badly I could just leave this place and go somewhere like France or the UK, or, hell, even Cuba!
I think it is an absolute travesty that the wealthiest country on this planet has such an obvious disparity in access to quality healthcare. But then again, I have to ask myself: "Who benefits from the status quo?" And the answer is quite obvious to me: the power elite, who has no need for a healthy, confident populace, since it is easier to control and dominate sick, downtrodden people. Yes, slavery is alive and well in the 21st century.
I apologize for turning this forum into my own personal soapbox. Though I am pessimistic that the issue of universal healthcare shall be solved, nor the other aforementioned social inequities expiated, in time to benefit myself, hopefully my nieces and nephews, and, indeed, all the children of this world, will never know the pain and hopelessness I am now suffering.
My best to you all.
--Brandon
Brandon was not a HubPages member, and after he left that message, in April '09, I never heard from him again.
