Imagine the scenario. Your child is sprawled across the floor, hyperventilating. He can't breathe. He's in a hell of a lot of distress.
For most parents in most first-world countries (and many developing-world ones) the obvious thing to do would be to call an ambulance and get the kid straight to hospital.
But not if you're in America and you don't have health insurance. The resulting healthcare bills mean that before you pick up the phone, you may have to choose between losing your child or losing your house.
Imagine another scenario: you live in the States, you are diagnosed with cancer, and you DO have health insurance. In fact you've never missed a premium payment. You seek healthcare, but you are denied it, because your insurance company has found a loophole in your policy and says you are not eligible for treatment. You can't afford the healthcare costs. You are faced with a long, painful death.
Sadly these are not imaginary situations; they are real and they are experienced by both the uninsured (50 million or so people) and the insured in America.
These two scenarios are just two examples of why Obama's plan to extend insurance and regulate it more rigorously is so important. Unsurprisingly, it is being fought tooth and nail by the American Right, which is using scaremongering and misinformation (or both) to portray the idea of wider coverage as somehow evil and un-American.
The scaremongering comes in the form of horror stories about 'death panels' associated with publicly-owned healthcare (which is not even on Obama's agenda). Arguably the most striking example of this came from the right-wing Investor's Business Daily - it recently made some almost comically wrong assumptions about Stephen Hawking and Britain's publicly funded National Health Service, saying:
"The stories of people dying on [an NHS] waiting list or being denied [care] altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."
Stephen Hawking subsequently pointed out that he owed his life to the NHS, saying "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS - I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."
If any such 'death panels' exist, they are arguably run by the US insurance companies. They frequently decide who lives or dies based on whether or not there are clauses in policies that allow them to maximise profit by refusing care.
More misinformation comes in the form of the claim that Obama's plan amounts to 'socialisation' of healthcare in the States. This is also daft, because the plan leaves healthcare privately provided. All it does is use public money to ensure that people can avail of that private care more easily.
From a European viewpoint, it is quite incredible that the Obama plan is being portrayed, in any serious way, as socialist - let alone communist. And even when you stop to think about things from an American perspective, the idea of public money being used to finance aspects of public services is not that odd. If those opposing Obama's plan really think that it will leave them with socialised healthcare (whatever that is), they will really need to start worrying about their already socialised policemen, socialised firemen, socialised teachers, socialised highways and - oh yes - a very heavily socialised military.
Lost in the debate are some facts. The US spent $2.2tn (£1.34tn) on its private healthcare system in 2007. That's 16.2% of GDP, nearly twice the average of other OECD countries (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8160058.stm). Yet less people there have access to care, and US healthcare is ranked by the World Health Organisation as 37th in the world, well below (shock!) France (1st), Britain (18th) and even my own little country, Ireland (19th).
In my view, the lack of universal healthcare in the USA is up there with the big crimes against humanity; and the struggle to provide healthcare to every US citizen, regardless of income, is as important as the struggle for civil rights was. Denying treatment to somebody because they are poor is one of the most heinous acts of discrimination; and denying an insured person healthcare to maximise profit is one of the sickest acts imaginable.
For the sake of 50 million uninsured Americans, and the many other insured ones, I really hope Obama pulls these fairly modest reforms off.
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As someone who uses the UK's National Health Service (both myself and my wife are Asthmatic) I can safely say that chances are that I wouldn't be here under a totally private system.
ReplyDeleteAt the time I was first hostpitalised (back in the 1980s) both my parents were unemployed and so wouldn't have been able to afford health insurance or huge hospital bills. Luckily my parents weren't held to ransom over the life of their seven-year-old son.
What would we have had to have paid for under a private system? Well, apart from the ambulance journey to the hospital (which was 15 miles away from where we lived), there would have been the one month that I was hospitalised (and an extra bill for my mother who was allowed to stay in with me), use of the oxygen tent, medication and so forth. Not something that an unemployed family could have afforded.
Also I was on medication constantly for the next ten years. This was also paid for by the NHS.
If we had been living in America I very much doubt I'd still be here typing this.