Full Access to Health Care
– Why Not?

Dec 13, 2009

In mid-November, the Democrats lined up all their votes to push health care onto the Senate floor for debate. The House of Representatives had already passed its own version.

The Democrats called this a victory.

And it is – for the insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries, which all expect to make higher profits from it.

But it’s no victory for the population.

Whatever comes out of the final bill, the population is going to get screwed. Costs will go up for almost everyone, 24 million people will remain without any insurance and 168 million will continue to have inadequate insurance.

It’s a crime. There’s more than enough wasted administrative costs in the current system to provide decent health care for everyone – for today’s uninsured, as well as for the rest of us, most of whom are inadequately insured.

If the current U.S. system were organized like Canada’s, 400 billion dollars in wasted administrative costs could be saved and spent on actual health care every year – much more than the 85 billion a year the Senate bill is supposed to cost (848 billion dollars over ten years).

Canada’s system is hardly perfect, but it’s much more efficient and less costly, while providing better health outcomes than the U.S. system. These facts are widely known by medical researchers, hidden only by constant propaganda coming from the insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical industries.

The Canadian system is a “single-payer” system, much like government-paid Medicare here, but for the whole population. Canadians make a regular payment each year into the government-funded system, much like we do with Medicare. This contribution lets them go to the doctor they want, the hospital they want. Middlemen are knocked out of the system, and costs and profits of the big industries that today gouge everyone are severely restricted. That’s one reason drug prices are much lower in Canada than here!

People in this country widely support Medicare, and most want something like that for everyone. Thirty-nine State AFL-CIO Councils, 134 Central Labor Councils and about 400 other labor organizations have endorsed such a reform.

In 2007, 42% of all doctors, when polled, expressed support for a single-payer system. General family doctors, the ones who really treat us, favor it by a large majority. Many of the leading researchers in public health matters have been pushing for such a “single-payer” system.

But none of them were invited to appear before Congressional hearings. And, on May 5, when some of the most respected experts in the field of health care tried to speak to the Senate Finance Committee, they were pulled out of the room in handcuffs.

The Democrats were not going to allow medical experts to challenge their gifts to the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.

The Republicans are just as bad. They may criticize, trying to tap into the population’s distrust of this “reform.” But, defending the current system, they offer no perspective. And they spout vile reactionary slogans attacking immigrants and women’s right to abortion.

The working class cannot expect to gain access to health care as a right through either of these two parties. Both Democrats and Republicans defend this capitalist system tooth and nail. And the capitalists never put human needs before profit. Only in periods when popular mobilizations forced their hands have they even partly recognized the population’s needs.

We, every one of us, regardless of age or citizenship, should have full access to health care. Anything less is not only inhumane, it also guarantees that disease spreads, that the overall society is not only less healthy, but less efficient.

We already pay taxes and outrageous costs to private industry. With much less cost for all of us, health care could be provided for every person.