Tuesday, May 12, 2009

ARE WE READY FOR HEALTHCARE TO GO PUBLIC?

The key difference between supporters and opponents of a universal healthcare system is whether guaranteed equal access to medical, dental and mental health services is a right or personal responsibility. Frankly speaking, looking at the statistics that demonstrates how “responsible” many of us are with respect to consumer credit, I understand why medical bills bring tens of thousands of un- and under-insured, even by conservative estimates (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=587901), to bankruptcy each year. But, unlike our spending and saving habits that only affect our financial health, missing out on necessary care can leave a person temporarily or permanently disabled, or even lead to death. There is an article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30628634) describing how people are forced to ignore medical advice and to forgo recommended treatment because they just do not have money to pay for it. Basically, this is about us, as a society, being ready to provide healthcare to every legal resident, regardless of his or her ability to pay, and to make contributions to the appropriate fund(s) mandatory, just like Social Security Tax.

The Wikipedia article “Health care reform in the United States” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_reform_in_the_United_States) cites a number of publications and contains lots of information on the subject. One of the findings is that there is absolutely no evidence that public healthcare in all other developed nations, in which everybody has equal access to services, is more expensive, creates more waste and has worse outcome statistics than the system we currently have. That does not mean that it is ideal. But it is definitely better if we are serious about not leaving millions of Americans out due to financial reasons or pre-existing conditions. Patients can be less concerned about their health records being available to all providers they get care from, since there will be no reason to hide anything there out of fear that their insurance premiums will go up. Free market is not always THE solution. Let us address the issues that we know exist in public healthcare, but not reject it because of them.