Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren
Some Americans question whether the United States should adopt universal healthcare as a solution to the healthcare crisis that the U.S. is experiencing. But, with healthcare costs rising every year, and the numbers of uninsured people exploding, that question is being answered with a resounding “yes!” by Americans speaking out in polls. However, a chorus of “no’s” comes from many conservatives, who feel that each state should establish its own mandatory health insurance law, modeled on the mandatory auto-insurance laws now in force in many states.
As an elder who spent many years without adequate healthcare coverage, I can personally relate to the plight of the uninsured and the underinsured. This is not a political issue; rather, it is a moral and ethical issue.
According to recently published reports, an estimated 45.8 million people in the United States are uninsured. In addition, around 32 million don’t have enough insurance. In California, where I live, figures gathered by California Senator Sheila Kuehl, Chair of the Senate Health Committee, and published in her January 2007 “Healthcare” essay, are revealing the desperate situation. Says Kuehl: “One in five Californians has no health insurance at all and most of these people are average working people.” Indeed, national figures show as many as 18,000 Americans die every year because they have no insurance or access to healthcare.
According to Senator Kuehl’s essay, insurance premiums have increased by double- digit percentages in the past five years, while overall spending and wages have not kept up. And while insurance premiums have increased exponentially, scope of coverage has decreased, because of the narrowing of provider networks, more exclusions for pre-existing conditions, drug formularies which exclude the most common and most effective brands, and limitations based on types of employment. A recent poll commissioned by the California Wellness Foundation revealed that eighty percent of Californians want the government to guarantee access to affordable healthcare coverage. Nationally, our current system is plagued by excessive insurance company profits, waste, fraud, corruption and inefficiency, not to mention the out-of-control cost of drugs. And, for people living with HIV/AIDS, the cutting of federal funds, vanishing of AIDS services and narrowing of access to services, creates an ever more urgent situation.
Massachusetts was the first state to attempt to tackle the healthcare situation. Unfortunately, their plan is modeled after the auto-insurance model, in which all residents are required to carry the insurance or face fines and penalties. In California, the legislature took a different tack: They passed Senator Sheila Kuehl’s universal healthcare bill. Unfortunately Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill without hesitation, and sent the message that any similar bills arriving at his desk would also be DOA. Sadly, the model proposed by Schwarzenegger, as his own personal solution to California healthcare reform, closely follows the Massachusetts model.
Meanwhile San Francisco, under the leadership of Mayor Gavin Newsom, created the first county-wide universal health care system. While there are many good things about Mayor Newsom’s plan, it still falls short of true single-payer universal healthcare coverage. Its plan guarantees universal access for those who voluntarily participate in the program, and who receive all of their healthcare services within the City and County of San Francisco. But this plan excludes dental coverage, fertility treatments and cosmetic procedures, and also excludes any care, even on an emergency basis, received outside the City and County of San Francisco.
With a Presidential election shaping up, people are taking sides, and their ideological positions are shaping up pretty predictably. While prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama favor universal healthcare, many prominent Republicans favor mandatory health insurance, insisting that it—like mandatory auto insurance—promotes individual fiscal responsibility. But the pet Republican theory doesn’t work. In states that have mandatory auto-insurance laws, the numbers of uninsured drivers have scarcely been reduced. So “mandatory” does not work with insurance, where low-income people’s ability to pay is concerned. And when it comes to health insurance, it is clearly inhumane for legislators to turn a person who can’t afford insurance into a scofflaw.
Indeed, punishing people for not having health insurance is a little like returning to the bad old days, when people were put in debtor’s prison if they couldn’t pay their bills.
Author of fiction bestsellers and provocative commentary, Patricia Nell Warren has her writings archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at pnw@patricianellwarren.com.
February 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved.
