Corporate Restructuring of Healthcare
Fails the American People
By Billy Wharton / The Rag Blog / February 26, 2010
At the President’s Healthcare Summit today, the American people witnessed a debate between the bad proposal for healthcare reform and the even worse one. The Democrats’ House and Senate bills fail to address the growing problems of for-profit healthcare. Instead, by mandating the purchase of healthcare, their plan will create a profitable market for private health insurance companies to exploit.
The Republicans’ counter-proposal, which seeks to allow consumers to buy insurance plans across state lines, would reverse decades of necessary reforms carried out at the state level. This would give mega-healthcare corporations a free-hand to expand their already abusive practices.
While the two parties squabble about how to carry out the corporate restructuring of healthcare, the American people continue to suffer under a for-profit healthcare system. 50 million people are uninsured, another 20 million underinsured and nearly 50,000 people die each year from preventable illnesses. In response, millions of Americans have begun to avoid healthcare — a recent survey indicates that six out of 10 have either deferred or delayed necessary care in the last year.
A fundamental political shift in the healthcare debate is necessary. Instead of a discussion of how markets should operate or how to build the proper risk pool to insure profits, we should be examining how to recognize healthcare as a basic human right.
Simply put, healthcare should not be treated as a commodity. Private health insurers provide no medical benefit to the people they cover. They merely extract profits from the doctor-patient relationship. Instead, we should create a comprehensive medical system that guarantees no-charge access and the provision of all medically necessary care.
Near the end of today’s summit, President Barack Obama asked “Can America, the wealthiest nation on earth, do what every industrialized country in the world does?” As a socialist, my answer is yes, but it will not come from the Democratic or Republican proposals. Instead, a single-payer National Healthcare Program would provide universal access for all people in America. Such a program would pave the way for the creation of a fully-socialized medical system that would ensure healthcare as a human right.
The time for high-level summits and backroom wrangling among politicians who have received large-scale contributions from private insurers and pharmaceutical companies has ended. It is now time for the creation of a mass social movement that expresses the desires of everyday Americans for a medical system organized around the values of solidarity, compassion, and justice. Rejecting both the Democratic and Republican proposals will be a key part of this process.
[Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine.]
I agree with most of what you have written and even strongly support access to health care as a birth right.
I think what we have to examine is that no law is ever perfect the first time and then question whether we should maintain the status quo or pass a bill that will get the ball rolling. I hope for the benefit of the over 50 million Americans, we have some semblance of a bill that can be changed in the years ahead. Follow the money eh?
peace
The problem with health care in the US is much bigger than just granting access to everyone. You say there are 50,000 deaths a year from lack of access, but there are 100,000 deaths a year from unnecessary infections caught in the hospital. We need to learn to look at the system itself more critically, which this bill does.
It would change the rules so that it is more profitable to keep patients healthy.
Anon – Access to health care is a birth right. Says who? Where is that listed in our constitution?