The Sorry State of the U.S. Health Care Industry
My buddy Chris Liss, a talented sports and fantasy sports writer for Rotowire.com and Rotosynthesis.com, is also a political junkie like me, with strong opinions about how this country is run. He runs a blog on the site called Stop The Monsters, which contains sporadic but typically excellent commentary. His latest missive, about the sorry state of the U.S. health care industry, its fundamentally corrupt nature, and the ways in which he’s been screwed over as a result, is well worth the read.
On a deeper, philosophical level, my thoughts on health care in the U.S. go something like this: If you’re young and completely healthy, never encounter any extraordinary medical circumstances, and especially if your employer pays for all or most of your health care costs, it’s a great system. Of course many, many people don’t fit one or more of those categories. Moreover, it’s worth asking what government’s role should be.
Many would argue that government should be able to help those who need help most, the people who have no way to help themselves. If you’re part of the working poor, have a job but not company health care coverage, make just enough to be above the poverty line but not enough to accumulate any disposable income, and you get really sick or hurt (broken leg, chronic illness, deadly disease)…well, you’re screwed. Hell, Chris makes good money, he’s in his mid-30s, works out like a fiend, quit smoking long ago…and he’s having a rough go of it, because of something as seemingly minor as ankle problems.
I get into arguments on occasion with family members who argue that the Canadian health care system is the way to go. I don’t quite agree. The tax burden in Canada is quite high, and the standard of care can be somewhat uneven (waiting more than four hours to be seen after slicing my hand wide open in BC wasn’t a pleasant memory). More broadly, I consider myself somewhat libertarian in many areas–most of all when it comes to civil liberties, but somewhat that way re: government spending too.
But just to be clear: I don’t consider this an either/or situation. As Chris notes in the article, providing people with options, such that private health care subscribers can continue to opt for that system, with others free to go the public health care route, is a necessary step for a country whose biggest financial threat is the spiraling cost of health care, not Lehman Brothers or GM.
Ideally the administration will find a way to cut spending in other areas to at least partially defray the added costs. But if the cost of finally ending this health care nightmare is slightly higher taxes across the board, so be it. A solution is long, long overdue.
Jonah, waiting 4 hours with a sliced hand sucks, but it’s not a result of public health care. I’ve waited 6 hours in the ER at a reputable hospital in LA bleeding pretty heavily from my mouth when the stitches from my tonsalectomy opened up. There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that public health care provides bad service, but also lots of positive statistical data. Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with yours and Chris’s stance on the option of gov’t health care coverage.