06 September 2008

heal the sick

I want to blather on for a moment about universal health care. I have a lot of respect for people who are conservative for fiscal and policy reasons and have really thought these things through, most of them much more thoroughly than I have. In my next life, I am going to be an economist, but I am not an economist now, and I completely understand not trusting the bureaucracy to run major systems. (Especially after the last eight years. Disaster after disaster. How can we trust the government ever again?)

BUT, I do not understand the arguments against universal health care, particularly at a primary care level. You the taxpayer pay for it right now anyway.

People who are uninsured (like me, at the moment, even with my J.D. and my job and my license to practice law) hold off on going to the doctor. I know I do. If I could go to the doctor and have my minor health concerns dealt with quickly and cheaply, I would. But I simply can't afford it. So I wait, and if things get really serious, I will do what most uninsured people do: I will go to the emergency room. They can't turn me away there.

Guess who pays then? Guess who pays my now-much larger bills? Hint: not me. I can't afford it. The way things look now, I will never be able to afford it.

So who pays for health care for people without insurance now?

YOU pay, because the hospital has to treat me, and they have to get paid somehow, so they raise the costs of all health care, and your insurance premiums and your copays go up.

YOU pay, because when a person is mentally ill and they have no insurance and can't get prescription drugs to keep them healthy, judges keep them in jail, on your tax dollar, as the only way to get them help.

YOU pay, because someone who could have gotten well with a simple antibiotic five months ago now needs that leg amputated, and again, where is the hospital getting that money? Your pocket, baby.

The problem is that insurance companies ARE bureaucracy, and the system is set up so that they have little to no accountability. They have, by and large, a monopoly on health care. They have made it impossible for people to pay on their own for health care, with their own hard-earned money. How would it be that much different to have a monopoly that, *gasp* helped everyone, even those who are not merrily middle-class?

I think universal health care would save everyone money. People would go to the doctor when they needed to go, and major problems would be averted. Very expensive major problems, problems that cost you and all other insured people a lot of money.

I am open to a logical economic argument why this is not true, but the charge that it is "socialist?" Why, that's just silly. Being against things because they are "socialist" is often code for being selfish. Just because I don't need it (well, I do, at the moment), just because you don't need it, doesn't mean it isn't necessary.

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