A Stitch in Time...

"Most of the disasters have come from politicians seeking to offload public problems onto business: American health care is one sad example."*

Preventive medicine works. Our friend's rare form of cancer is gone, along with the offending cervix where disease was spotted during a routine annual check-up. If she'd had no health insurance, she might have skipped this year's check-up. What if, even uninsured, she'd had the surgery that surely has saved her life? My experience says she would have been charged retail, which is much, much more than the insurers pay.

Having no health insurance is double trouble now faced by 47 million Americans and counting. Let's see: the people least able to afford those spectacular prices listed on medical bills -- charges typically dramatically reduced when an insurance provider is in the middle -- are the very same people expected to actually pay full freight. What's wrong with this picture?

Yes, preventive medicine works. It saves lives and is cost-effective. The U.S. spends a higher proportion of its GDP on health care than any other country. How much of that is effectively applied to our health? Comparative statistics say "not enough."

If we're honest, perhaps we should attach a disclaimer to "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", tiny print that reads "...but only for those who can afford it."

"Above all, it is governments, not firms, that should arbitrate between interest groups for the public interest. ... (F)irms are not there to solve the world's political problems. It is the job of governments to govern; don't let them wiggle out of it."*

*- The Economist, January 19, 2008, 'How Good Should Your Business Be" p. 13

Comments

[Dap]

Dear Ms. Gordon,

Once again you're on top of things and leading the way, eloquently expressed. Agape.

[jhNY]

Government here was scared off from mandating health care for its citizens by concerned business people who saw that as a grab at a potential profit center for themselves, but most of all by the AMA, who lobbied ceaselessly against government intervention into the medical profession, as they were certain it would lead to that old bugabear "socialized medicine", and lower incomes for their membership.

More or less by default, business became the provider of health insurance (not health care), at least those businesses who chose to provide it. And now that costs for insurance are inching toward unbearable, business would like to be relieved of its elective responsibility. Nowhere in this history is there much compassion or actual concern for the health of our citizens. Just rhetoric, fear of the unknown and greed.