It looks like something big is finally going to happen to the American health care system. President Obama seems hell-bent on getting major reform legislation passed and enacted before the snow clouds return to my little corner of New Jersey. He appears to realize that in 18 months he won’t have a strong Democratic majority in Congress, and his relatively high popularity ratings will continue to slide, as they do for almost all presidents. His power and influence as President, along with that of the Democratic Party, will generally wane over the next 3 and presumably 7 years. So Obama is pulling out all the stops to get something big done now.<\/p>\n
Most everyone seems to agree that something big is needed with regard to American healthcare. But as to whether our political system can deliver a system that can meet all of the promises that the Democrats are making, and avoid all the pitfalls that the G.O.P. is predicting, just may not be possible. It may be like hoping that you can drive a Ford Expedition from Maine to Florida on one tank of gas. When everyone is getting into the SUV as it is about to leave Portland, the crew might be optimistic. They might say to each other \u201csure we’re going to make it, no need to take any gas money.\u201d And by saying it back and forth, round robin amidst each other, everyone gets a good, confident feeling. It’s easy for everyone in a group to think \u201chey, everyone else believes it, so it’s probably true\u201d. Ah, the pitfalls of circular group-think. This little Expedition expedition might get past Boston, might even see the Rhode Island border, but it will finally realize that they’re going to run out of gas.<\/p>\n
So just what is the Democratic group-think getting at right now with regard to health care? Well, here’s what the country seems to want:<\/p>\n
1.) Everyone will have full health coverage at a price affordable to each family, given their own circumstances. No one is going to be denied health care because of their economic circumstances, and no one is going to have to make radical changes in their lifestyles (bad changes, towards poverty) because of health problems. The USA is finally going to catch up with Europe and affirm health care as a human right, just as education is a right for the young.<\/p>\n
2.) There won’t be any rationing. The poor, the working class, the middle class, the well-off, and the super-rich will all get the same care, and will get it when needed. If a rich person could get a $250,000 treatment that would extend his life for 6 months, the poor person will also get it. Maybe the rich person will be allowed to pay for some frills, such as better food and nicer wallpaper in hospital rooms, or the ability to schedule an appointment with a doctor on weekends or at 9PM (instead of having to take a day off from work to see the doc at 11 AM). But as far as medical care quality goes, everyone will get the same thing.<\/p>\n
3.) The government will somehow eliminate all the nasty, frustrating things that private insurers now do to sick people in order to control costs. There won’t be any more \u201cpayment denied\u201d or \u201cthat condition isn’t covered\u201d or long nightmarish struggles on the phone to correct billing errors. The government will find ways, through research and regulation, to control costs without pulling the rug from under the average Jane or Joe who encounters medical misfortune.<\/p>\n
4.) And yet, the private sector and competitive markets will still be involved such that the wonderful track record of providing new drugs and treatments will continue unchecked into the future. The forces of competition will also help to develop data and communication systems that will eliminate a lot of the paperwork and red-tape and bureaucratic snafus that currently plague our health care administrative system.<\/p>\n
5.) And the doctors will get a fair deal too. They will be protected from unreasonable lawsuits, will be paid sufficient wages to compensate them for all of the effort needed to become a doctor and to keep up with the advances of medical science, and for all the long work hours and 24-hour availability that most of them provide. <\/p>\n
6.) Finally, in doing all this, we won’t wreck the American economy. Health care has already grown to more than 15% of our GDP, and will surpass 20% within the next 10 years. If this comes to pass, how is this all going to be paid for? Right now I’m hearing that a few nuisance taxes on the rich, on soda pop, and on insurance companies and health care corporations, will take care of things without any significant impact on the working class and the middle class.<\/p>\n
It’s fairly easy right now to pass off the Republican criticism of this dream; their main point is that we will soon become like Canada and England, where in some cases there may be forms of rationing. But at the same time, public polls indicate that over 70% of Canadians and British citizens are satisfied with their health care systems; in the USA, the comparable figure is about 56%. The G.O.P. is crying wolf and is easy to ignore; their sour-grapes are a bit too obvious. <\/p>\n
But can Obama and his Democratic colleagues actually craft a system that can do the impossible? No, something is going to give. The USA is going to be plugging away at this problem for many years to come. The system that will be developed by this fall will not be the final system. The slavery issue took around 20 years to resolve; the health care issue might also go past a single decade. Hopefully there won’t need to be a civil war over health care. But there is going to have to be change in the way that Americans live, just as the resolution of slavery made America a different place. Americans themselves had to change in order to resolve the great crisis of slavery; they spent many years in the 1830s and 1840s crafting political compromises attempting to not require any big changes to daily life. Finally, the war showed them that it just wasn’t possible. <\/p>\n
Something — I’m not sure what — is eventually going to convince American citizens that health care will require changes in how life is lived. And some of those changes are going to involve sacrifice. As with any national-level sacrifice, the changes aren’t going to be entirely fairly and equitably distributed. People are going to need to put more effort into preserving their own health (better eating habits, eliminate smoking, violent and highly risky behavior, driving cars at reasonable speeds, regular exercising, regular check ups, etc.) And maybe they’re also going to have to get used to somewhat lower living standards in return for greater fairness. The rich are going to have to learn to be a bit less greedy and not threaten to shut the economy down because they can’t become multi-billionaires or receive $1 million management bonuses each year. Sacrifice and patriotism \u2013 ideas that weren’t very popular with my Baby Boom generation \u2013 will need to make a comeback. Health care is going to be a great on-going struggle, a highly vexing issue over the next decade or two. At some point it may amount to a form of class-war. I may not live to see it all resolved. <\/p>\n
I could be wrong here, but I don’t believe that Barack Obama will be remembered as the Abraham Lincoln of health care. That role will hopefully be taken up by some future leader willing to sacrifice political opportunism (or to sacrifice her or his own life, as with Lincoln) for the sake of a greater good. We haven’t seen a president like that in a long time (no, I don’t mean Ronald Reagan; I’m thinking more like Harry Truman or FDR). Hopefully, the kids who are alive today will live to see the woman or man who will go pick up that torch, a torch that will inspire greater wisdom, a wisdom that is the only true cure for the many social maladies plaguing our modern health care situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It looks like something big is finally going to happen to the American health care system. President Obama seems hell-bent on getting major reform legislation passed and enacted before the snow clouds return to my little corner of New Jersey. He appears to realize that in 18 months he won’t have a strong Democratic majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}