Single Payer Health Care

When it comes to choices in healthcare in this country, why should we have to make a choice about what we pay to have covered and what we don’t? Why can’t a proper single payer system cover all necessary costs? Why are people forced to pick and choose their health benefits like they are optioning out a car? Why should a better quality of treatment and therefore one’s resulting quality of health be lessened or improved solely due their financial status? Why should billions be spent on advertising year round when open enrollment is for a brief time once a year? Why do insurance companies have different claim forms and codes when a universal system would save billions each year?

I can see certain luxuries such as private rooms costing extra but are they really necessary? No! Do they have anything to do with the quality of care a person receives? No!

Personal options such as these can and should be left to the supplementary private insurance market as should all the extra luxuries not critical to the needs of quality health care.

Current Republican proposals for any type over voucher system for medicare fail to address the differing needs of medicare users. In my experience, most people do not understand the details of their health insurance now. How are they expected to be able to make an informed decision about what to purchase if they can’t understand the intricacies of the system they have now? Can we really trust a bunch of agents trying to make commissions to really explain all the options to millions of new customers and do what is truly best for the consumers? After working in that industry several years ago, I would say no. While most agents may be honest, the few who are not could bring the whole system down. Face it, insurance agents are trusted about as much as used car salesmen.

A true single payer system is called socialist by many but it really is not. If Doctors and Hospital staff become state employees it is but if they remain in private practice and the Hospitals are run privately it cannot be socialist. All who work should pay and all employers should pay the same amount per employee. No exemptions for small businesses can be allowed. For all to receive, all have to contribute and should contribute equally if able to do so.

What would it do for the competitiveness of business if healthcare cost were effectively taken out of the equation because the cost per employee was a fixed and know quantity? The result would be an even playing field for all. Small business could more easily compete with large and grow. Is that not what fair enterprise is about? Doesn’t a truly level playing field result in more competition, not less? Would this not fuel growth? And would not healthier workers be more productive also leading to better business competition?

I keep hearing people complaining that they don’t want to pay for someone else’s healthcare. Guess what? They are anyway. If you pay and never get sick and file a claim but your neighbor does, guess what? You’re paying for him! It’s called shared risk. It is the principal behind all insurance. If you pay car insurance for your whole life and never make a claim you don’t get your money back. The money pays others who do make a claim. Health insurance is no different. You pay and hope you don’t need it for any major health issues because what the insurance company has to pay out will by far exceed anything you have ever paid in.

If everyone pays equally then the risk is shared equally. Why should you pay more because of some possible risk factor and never have an issue related to that factor? Human lives are not property. They cannot and must not have a dollar value assigned to the as is done in the current private market system. Human life should never be valued in this manner.

A government which proclaims that all men are created equal should never allow the type of devaluing of human life that the present system promotes.

Conservatives say that everyone should look after themselves and work to meet their own needs. If that is the case why do we even have governments? Any government which is truly for the people, by the people, and of the people is by necessity a definition of people looking after themselves and looking after their neighbor. To provide proper single payer healthcare, this principle must be understood. The government cannot be viewed as something apart from each of us. It must be considered to be inclusive of us, a part of us, and we a part of it. Good health and therefore healthcare should be a right that we guarantee to ourselves through our government in order to allow all of us to realize the founding fathers’ dream of the “pursuit of happiness”.