Health Care Reform: Are the Politicians for Real?
By
Ron Steinman
Motivating the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats to change health care in America has to do only with money. Covering the uninsured takes a back seat to what the Blue Dogs call fiscal conservatism. In fact, the Blue Dogs might be even more fiscally conservative than the conservative Republicans who probably go to bed at night thanking their stars for the Blue Dogs. We are witnessing politics running wild. These elected men and women seem to be saying health care reform can wait. After all, the country is behind much of the developed world so who cares if we as a nation fall even further behind. The uncovered can and will continue to suffer. People who do not have good health care will continue to drag our country down because we will spend too much money getting sick people better rather than preventing them from getting sick in the first place.
Recall that George Bush said if people are sick they can go to the emergency room. Sure. I have been to the emergency room when all else has failed. It is not a place where a person wants to be when he or she is sick.
If everyone felt as these anti-everything types in Congress, do Congress would, as it usually does, do nothing, or worse, compromise in a way that means many people will continue to suffer. Progress, almost dead now, might be dead and buried forever. The status quo would be just that, the status quo.
These self-styled fiscally responsible elected officials probably believe their penuriousness is saving the republic because they contend that at least 90 percent of Americans have some sort of coverage. In their minds, some sort is obviously better than none. They do not worry about the ten percent who do not have coverage. I do not know where the 90 percent figure comes from but it seems too small when you consider that most observers think between 47 million and 50 million people are without health insurance.
Take a look at the 50 million and think of the following. The top forty cities in America have approximately 48 million five hundred thousand people living in them. Imagine the chaos if on any given morning, all those people awoke to find that they no longer had any health insurance. People would suffer beyond what they can imagine. Some would die. Emergency rooms would collapse from overuse. I could go on and on about how bad it would be. I will not. Use your imagination.
A recent Pew survey finds that 95 percent of the American people believe that health care reform is important. With that, more than two-thirds say the proposed changes are very hard to understand. One third say the proposals are easy to understand. Only 78 percent believe health care reform affects them personally. Even if some people have the perfect insurance plan, and somehow I doubt one exists, why is that number not 100 percent?
Fourteen thousand people a day are losing their health insurance, a situation made worse by the downturn in the economy. Some analysts think that most people only care about themselves and not about the have-nots. The White House can surely do a better job explaining this disparity to people and make them care. After all, we are in this together. Or at least, I hope we are.
Those who are for or against for health care reform are now spending some 2 million dollars a day for advertising. Think of the good that money could do for something else, anything else. And the fight is just starting. The amount will rise steadily.
Fear is a great equalizer, especially when it strikes close to home. Fear of having no health insurance surely must make those who have none anxious all their waking moments. I find it hard to fathom that most Americans want to deny health care to those who do not have it. If those who want to deny health insurance reform to those who do not have it just to save money, then we as a nation are in more serious trouble than anyone can imagine.
I am not naïve about the cost of universal health care. It will be expensive. Any bill passed now will be less than perfect. It will be a beginning. We must decide if we want the 50 million who are without health insurance to continue to be chronically ill or a disaster waiting to happen. In the end without health insurance to cover those who now lack it, the cost to our country to care for the sick will be immense. It is a cost from which we will never recover. It is a cost we can ill afford. Have we no shame?
1 Comment
September 4, 2009 at 11:05 am09
yeah i believe too…if health care very important now..