.The home stretch toward a more caring U.S.
Bills will lay a foundation for socialized health care that is hardly foreign to the American experience
"This is a massive government takeover of health care," U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) complained Dec. 22 during the historic debate over proposed U.S. health care reforms.
Over the next two weeks or so, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will hammer out a final reform bill that reconciles bills each has passed, for U.S. President Barack Obama's signature before he gives his State of the Union late this month.
Should that final bill pass in the coming days, it will be the most significant piece of progressive legislation in more than four decades, since the introduction in the U.S. of Medicare in the 1960s.
Progressives will be dismayed by the compromises required to gain this bill's passage. But a look back at the primitive Social Security 1.0 and Medicare 1.0 before later improvements were made to each should reassure them that laying the foundation is the landmark achievement that makes possible a more caring society.
Nothing is more difficult than to make a start, especially true of a U.S. system of governance designed to resist change. The Economist, while regretting that "distortions that encourage over-consumption and over-prescription" will remain, hails the reform. "The shameful fact that a country as rich and powerful as America leaves tens of millions of its citizens with only the most basic health care is on its way to being expunged."
A newsflash for John Cornyn and his fellow demonizers of "socialized medicine" in the current debate: Socialized medicine already dominates U.S. health care. This has been the case for decades, and in some respects for centuries.
ABOUT 60 PER CENT of U.S. health care expenditures are made by government at all levels, totalling $1.3 trillion (U.S.). This according to a report last month by the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service.
Government already is by far the largest health care provider in the U.S., covering about 100 million people, or one in three Americans. Government in the U.S. provides health care to more people than any nation but Japan. It covers more people than the combined populations of Britain, Canada and Sweden.
If you're a senior in the U.S., Uncle Sam covers your health care costs with Medicare.
If you're poor or physically disabled, the taxpayer covers your health care costs with Medicaid.
If you're a child of a family whose income is modest but too high to qualify for Medicaid, the taxpayer covers your health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
If you're a military veteran, the taxpayer covers your health-care costs through the Veterans' Administration. Veterans have been covered by government, albeit never sufficiently, since the Revolutionary War.
Uncle Sam provides health services to 1.8 million American Indians and Alaska natives, under treaty obligations dating from 1787.
If you're among the 1 million Americans behind bars – the world's largest prison population – your health care is provided by the state. Charles Manson has been a recipient of taxpayer-funded health care for 38 years. Foreign guests of the corrections system also receive U.S. taxpayer-financed health care. This includes Conrad Black, now serving a 6 1/2-year jail sentence on fraud and obstruction of justice charges in a Florida penitentiary.
Dwight Eisenhower was a recipient of taxpayer-funded health care his entire adult life. This is true also of John McCain, Bob Dole and Phil Gramm, all GOP opponents of reforms intended to provide coverage to 50 million Americans lacking the health-care coverage from which they have benefited for a lifetime.
The U.S. debate on health care reform is not about further socializing an already heavily socialized U.S. system. It's about extending health care coverage to 94 per cent of U.S. citizens, still short of the 100 per cent in every other industrialized nation, and making sure that private insurers treat their clients fairly.
It's about ensuring that private insurers stop reneging on their benefit-payout obligations. Ending their practice of denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions by "cherry-picking" only the healthiest payers of high and rising premiums. And stopping their practice of putting an annual or lifetime cap on claims.
And it's about finally getting spiralling health-care costs under control, a priority of every other nation with comprehensive government health care but, strangely, not the U.S.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposed reforms will indeed stop the explosion in costs that would otherwise bankrupt the Republic by 2035. They will instead result in $100 billion (U.S.) in savings over the first decade, and $1 trillion over the next.
When someone next asks you for an example of an elaborately socialized health-care system, point them to the U.S.
As it happens, those parts of American medicine administered by government bureaucrats are those with which Americans are happiest, especially the single-payer Medicare program.
I left out a U.S. group that also benefits from "socialized medicine." That would be politicians opposed to reform who never have waited hours at a walk-in clinic for care. They have never experienced the trauma of waiting for care in a hospital emergency ward – the sole source of care for millions of Americans without health coverage, and the costliest for the U.S. taxpayers who subsidize it.
Incorporated in the compensation of elected officials are taxpayer-paid premiums for first-class health care. Every Republican and blue-dog Democrat on Capitol Hill who waxes indignant about the socialization of American health care is a recipient of socialized health care. And happy to be so.
I think the term for those folks is "hypocrite." I can think of some others, but this is a family paper.
If they were honest, those alarmist elected officials would surrender their gold-plated health-insurance benefits as they seek to deny decent, affordable coverage for low- and middle-income Americans – the hard-working taxpayers who foot the bill for a socialized American health-care system from which they alone are excluded.
The Star
"This is a massive government takeover of health care," U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) complained Dec. 22 during the historic debate over proposed U.S. health care reforms.
Over the next two weeks or so, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will hammer out a final reform bill that reconciles bills each has passed, for U.S. President Barack Obama's signature before he gives his State of the Union late this month.
Should that final bill pass in the coming days, it will be the most significant piece of progressive legislation in more than four decades, since the introduction in the U.S. of Medicare in the 1960s.
Progressives will be dismayed by the compromises required to gain this bill's passage. But a look back at the primitive Social Security 1.0 and Medicare 1.0 before later improvements were made to each should reassure them that laying the foundation is the landmark achievement that makes possible a more caring society.
Nothing is more difficult than to make a start, especially true of a U.S. system of governance designed to resist change. The Economist, while regretting that "distortions that encourage over-consumption and over-prescription" will remain, hails the reform. "The shameful fact that a country as rich and powerful as America leaves tens of millions of its citizens with only the most basic health care is on its way to being expunged."
A newsflash for John Cornyn and his fellow demonizers of "socialized medicine" in the current debate: Socialized medicine already dominates U.S. health care. This has been the case for decades, and in some respects for centuries.
ABOUT 60 PER CENT of U.S. health care expenditures are made by government at all levels, totalling $1.3 trillion (U.S.). This according to a report last month by the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service.
Government already is by far the largest health care provider in the U.S., covering about 100 million people, or one in three Americans. Government in the U.S. provides health care to more people than any nation but Japan. It covers more people than the combined populations of Britain, Canada and Sweden.
If you're a senior in the U.S., Uncle Sam covers your health care costs with Medicare.
If you're poor or physically disabled, the taxpayer covers your health care costs with Medicaid.
If you're a child of a family whose income is modest but too high to qualify for Medicaid, the taxpayer covers your health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
If you're a military veteran, the taxpayer covers your health-care costs through the Veterans' Administration. Veterans have been covered by government, albeit never sufficiently, since the Revolutionary War.
Uncle Sam provides health services to 1.8 million American Indians and Alaska natives, under treaty obligations dating from 1787.
If you're among the 1 million Americans behind bars – the world's largest prison population – your health care is provided by the state. Charles Manson has been a recipient of taxpayer-funded health care for 38 years. Foreign guests of the corrections system also receive U.S. taxpayer-financed health care. This includes Conrad Black, now serving a 6 1/2-year jail sentence on fraud and obstruction of justice charges in a Florida penitentiary.
Dwight Eisenhower was a recipient of taxpayer-funded health care his entire adult life. This is true also of John McCain, Bob Dole and Phil Gramm, all GOP opponents of reforms intended to provide coverage to 50 million Americans lacking the health-care coverage from which they have benefited for a lifetime.
The U.S. debate on health care reform is not about further socializing an already heavily socialized U.S. system. It's about extending health care coverage to 94 per cent of U.S. citizens, still short of the 100 per cent in every other industrialized nation, and making sure that private insurers treat their clients fairly.
It's about ensuring that private insurers stop reneging on their benefit-payout obligations. Ending their practice of denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions by "cherry-picking" only the healthiest payers of high and rising premiums. And stopping their practice of putting an annual or lifetime cap on claims.
And it's about finally getting spiralling health-care costs under control, a priority of every other nation with comprehensive government health care but, strangely, not the U.S.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposed reforms will indeed stop the explosion in costs that would otherwise bankrupt the Republic by 2035. They will instead result in $100 billion (U.S.) in savings over the first decade, and $1 trillion over the next.
When someone next asks you for an example of an elaborately socialized health-care system, point them to the U.S.
As it happens, those parts of American medicine administered by government bureaucrats are those with which Americans are happiest, especially the single-payer Medicare program.
I left out a U.S. group that also benefits from "socialized medicine." That would be politicians opposed to reform who never have waited hours at a walk-in clinic for care. They have never experienced the trauma of waiting for care in a hospital emergency ward – the sole source of care for millions of Americans without health coverage, and the costliest for the U.S. taxpayers who subsidize it.
Incorporated in the compensation of elected officials are taxpayer-paid premiums for first-class health care. Every Republican and blue-dog Democrat on Capitol Hill who waxes indignant about the socialization of American health care is a recipient of socialized health care. And happy to be so.
I think the term for those folks is "hypocrite." I can think of some others, but this is a family paper.
If they were honest, those alarmist elected officials would surrender their gold-plated health-insurance benefits as they seek to deny decent, affordable coverage for low- and middle-income Americans – the hard-working taxpayers who foot the bill for a socialized American health-care system from which they alone are excluded.
The Star
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