Some brief thoughts on health care--more to come

If we think about it not as a health-care issue but as an insurance issue, it makes a lot more pragmatic sense for our country to have mandated health care. We pay insurance liability when we drive a car because of obvious risk associated with driving; this insurance is MANDATORY because our society is based on fairness--we aim to avoid secondary costs to those involved who were not at fault in an accident and ultimately to prevent financial dominoes that occurs when the person without insurance has to pay for hospital bills or lawsuits and then cannot pay other entities. Having insurance is like buying a share in responsibility instead of moving through a dangerous world vulnerable to every fateful occurrence and left to pay your cleanup costs and those of everyone else if there is an accident.

Why shouldn’t health care be the same? If we are a society that believes no one should be denied EMERGENCY medical treatment, isn’t it counterproductive to deny coverage (which is the job of many insurance company employees, and for good financial reason) for serious ailments and then wait until it becomes an emergency whose hospital write-off costs we ALL have to shoulder? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure—speaking of which, we could do for more preventative medicine as well. As for small businesses, I think we are just so used to our status quo: “If our group insurance is good, then let’s not mess with the system.” But my boss used to pay exorbitant rates for small group insurance just because of the demographics of his company—most employees had families with more than two children. On his group insurance plan, I was once given the go-ahead for a procedure and then denied permission to proceed literally an hour before the procedure due to “pre-existing condition”. In this case it seems almost a pure exercise in power, where the necessity of the procedure is not even factored in, but only what they can get away with denying me (I’m not saying it WAS the most crucial procedure, btw). My co-workers had substantially more deducted from their paychecks because of their children. These were not isolated experiences but rather part of the constant “private bureaucracy” dedicated to bottom line. Also, how is an employee to change his insurance if he is unsatisfied? Group insurance is provided by employer and it is rational to choose this over directly-purchased insurance (in the privatized market) because costs are simply too high to do otherwise.

In the final sum this bill is aimed at fairness, and though it MIGHT have some affect on the extensiveness/cost of some plans, it should make insurance more affordable and health care more available for all, and quality won’t be considerably diminished. If health care is a right and not a privilege, this is not only an economically pragmatic decision but a utilitarian and moral one as well.