The Health Care Debate
For anyone that knows me personally, health care is one of my red-button issues. It’s the quickest way to rile me up, so as you can imagine, the current raging health care debate is driving me out of my freaking mind. And to make it worse, the fact that those opposing health care reform are nothing but fear-mongering liars or simple-minded sheep is quickly sapping the pride I felt for my country when Barack Obama was overwhelmingly(yes, OVERWHELMINGLY) elected president.
I support single payer universal healthcare quite strongly. I believe it’s been proven to be effective at solving the primary problems of health care in the United States: rising costs and shrinking coverage. Unfortunately, the crazies out there have terrified Democrats to the point where universal healthcare isn’t even really on the table. Instead, they’re pursuing a “public option.” I can live with that, because it will at least cover those who have no coverage now(for example, my own mother. More on that later), and it will reign in the greed that has run rampant in health insurance companies. The right-wing whackjobs are making so much noise the so-called liberal media(ha) is actually treating them like a legitimate opposition, while they are, quite literally, nothing more than psychotics who have been fed lies by insurance companies and their patsies in Congress and believe every word of them.
Let me very clear on this:
- the right-wing opposition has absolutely no leg to stand on.
And I’m going to go over a few points to explain why.
“A free market health care system is most beneficial. We should get rid of regulation bodies like the FDA, too.”
Wrong. First, regulations like those imposed by the FDA are what keep snake-oil-selling drug companies in check, otherwise these companies would sell sugar pills as cures for cancer just to make a buck. Second, profits for insurance companies have risen 428% from 2000 to 20007, while the number of uninsured Americans has risen by 19%. That is absolutely shameful, and proves that, in a market health insurance system such as ours, health care providers make money by not providing health care.
Think about it: health insurance companies make money from premiums. Health insurance companies lose money when they pay for health care procedures. These companies do not exist just to provide access to health care(like, say, a government-run single payer system would). They exist to make a profit. Paying for care lowers their profit, so it is in a health insurance company’s best interest to not provide health care insurance, and to raise premiums as high as possible.
To put it simply, health insurance companies want profit. Profit leads to greed. Greed leads to those companies doing everything they can to maximize income while minimizing payouts. Therefore, a capitalist health care system is, by nature, bad for everyone except health insurance companies.
“The current health care bill in Congress will lead to forced euthanasia.”
Um…if you actually believe that, you’re an idiot. Seriously. The provision in the bill people are talking about is insurance coverage for discussing and planning a living will with a doctor. There are no and will be no “death panels” or “forced euthanasia.” This claim is nothing but a right wing scare tactic, and unfortunatey, it’s working, because Democrats have announced this provision has been removed from the bill. Hey, I never said the Democrats weren’t a bunch of giant pussies.
“Government-run health care will take away our choice of doctors, hospitals, and treatments.”
Wrong again. Single-payer health care doesn’t take away choices. There are no massive waiting lines or rationing or any other side effect the right wing has made up to scare people, and I have heard no reports of anyone dying because they had to wait for health care in any country with a universal system. You can still pick your doctor, your hospital, you treatment, and everything else. The biggest difference is, instead of the first question at a doctor’s office being, “Do you have insurance?” it’ll be “How can we make you well?”
The choice argument makes me especially sick. A few months ago, I had surgery on my leg to remove a benign tissue mass. I’m 22 years old, and the mass had been in my leg for five years. I suffered from what felt like a muscle cramp that never went away and varied from slightly noticeable to so excruciating I couldn’t sleep at night for five years because I didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford to do anything about it. The only choice I had in that situation was “hope it isn’t cancer.” And by the way, even though I now have health insurance, I still can’t afford all of the medical bills from my thirty-minute surgery.
A few years ago, my mother(who for most of my life has been self-employed, and done anything involving wallpaper, painting, and other construction/home improvement-related work) was working on a ceiling in a marble bathroom. She fell off a ladder and landed on her side, and then had a very painful feeling that she said felt like she’d at least bruised a rib. Instead of going to a doctor, she came home and went to bed. Where was her choice? In what is supposed to be the greatest country in America, it’s an absolute fucking shame to have people that can’t have basic access to health care.
Those are just two cases of the so-called “choice” we have in health care right now. There are an estimated 47 million people in this country that can probably tell a similar story.
So, as you can see, the major arguments of the conservatives are blatantly false. It’s time we called a lie a lie; a liar a liar. These people are liars. There is no grassroots opposition. There are only terrified corporate executives and their equally-terrified puppets in Congress, scurrying to plant as much propaganda as they can to turn public opinion against progress. They have no plan to fix health care. They only care about defeating Barack Obama and maintaining their stranglehold on American health care. They cannot be allowed to win.
I’m just keeping it real.
