Talk to any business owner, and you will find the cost of providing health care benefits to employees, (if the business can actually afford to provide them) ranks right up there with the cost of payroll. This past year alone many businesses have been forced to change to health care plans with higher deductibles and co-pays, because premium costs are up by 10 to 20 percent or more.
GM, one of the bailout car companies, reported in 2005 that for each car that rolled off the assembly line they paid $1,500 dollars in health care costs. Former Chrysler chairman, Lee Iacocca, said the same year, “It is a well-known fact that the U.S. automobile industry spends more per car on health care than on steel.” Some believe health care packages provided by GM and other car-makers to employees made it hard for them to compete with foreign car builders (who rely on national health care), contributing greatly to the present collapse among our auto giants.
Talk to families buying health insurance on their own. A healthy family of three can pay above $700 a month for coverage––enough to otherwise cover a mortgage or rent payment. Talk to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have gone bankrupt because they were injured while uninsured and couldn’t rally-up enough cash at some local benefit to cover their bills.
Health care in this country is beyond pathetic. Right now, as we speak, 50 million people are completely uninsured, and another 50 million-plus are insured via the government’s Medicaid program.
People opposed to universal health care foresee growing “socialism,” long waiting lines for elective surgery, shoddy care and high taxes. But these non-empathetic naysayers probably have never been refused coverage because of a “pre-existing condition” or had a medical payment refused for a procedure they thought was covered.
Paul Krugman, Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times said recently, “…the United States is the only wealthy country in which the economic catastrophe will also be a health care catastrophe — in which millions of people will lose their health insurance along with their jobs, and therefore lose access to essential care.”
What’s more, in 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the United States (purportedly the most prosperous country on Earth) 37th on World Health’s list of national health systems. France was 1st and Italy was 2nd.
Americans are slaves to health insurance companies, and we should take lessons from countries like France and Italy and develop a system that’s better than theirs. If the American people weren’t saddled with extravagant health care costs, businesses would have more to invest, families would have more to spend, and those who are currently uninsured could live without the fear and anxiety of a major personal catastrophe.
An uninsured friend told a Progress employee she wasn’t scared of the pain of getting hurt in an accident. She was scared instead of the hospital bill she would get afterwards. This friend, incidentally, has worked part-time nearly four years at a job she loathes, waiting to move up into a full time position that includes benefits.
Obama’s massive stimulus package, which is obviously more than just a stimulus, is a major push by Democrats to get some traction on universal health care.
In a recent New York Times article, Obama was quoted as saying he would like to work towards a health care system that would “Allow workers who lose jobs that did not come with insurance benefits to be eligible, for the first time, to apply for Medicaid coverage.”
Written in the stimulus proposal are $40 billion to subsidize health care insurance for the unemployed under the COBRA program (or to provide health care through Medicaid) and another $87 billion to help states fund Medicaid.
Dems aren’t exactly calling it straight. Many items in their stimulus package amount to pork. But the plan’s stroke toward universal health care certainly has potential for stimulating our economy. Maybe everyone on their anti-socialist high horse could afford to dismount and realize our health care system is due a massive surgery. It seems Obama is prepping the operating table. |
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