The United States is different. In the U.S., health care is not a right but a privilege granted only to those who can afford to pay for it. Because of this mean-spirited attitude, there are millions of people in the U.S. that have no health insurance coverage at all -- meaning they have no access to health care (especially preventative care) except for emergency care offered by emergency rooms of public hospitals (which catch many illnesses long after the time when they could have been treated). Because of this, over 45,000 people die each year for no better reason than lack of health insurance -- deaths that could have been prevented if they had insurance allowing them to get preventative care on a regular basis from a doctor of their choice.
There is no excuse for this. Some people say the United States couldn't afford to cover all of its large population with health insurance, but many other nations with large populations do it -- and they do it on a much cheaper per person basis. The United States has a much higher per capita health expenditure, yet covers a smaller percentage of its population.
The new health care reform (commonly called Obamacare) would have gone a bit further toward covering most Americans with health insurance (largely through health exchanges, employer deductions, and an expansion of Medicaid), but even this reform effort stopped short of covering all Americans. And thanks to the Supreme Court striking down Obamacare's provision requiring states to expand their Medicaid programs, many more will continue to go without any health insurance. That's because Republican governors in too many states have decided to keep the vastly inadequate current Medicaid program.
After Obamacare completely kicks in, that 45,000 deaths due to lack of insurance will probably be reduced some, but there will still be thousands of unnecessary deaths for that reason. In a country as rich as the United States, that is simply inexcusable -- and it shows that too many of our politicians (especially Republicans and blue dogs) don't really care whether the poor die unnecessarily or not.
Any American who is not ashamed of that is a hard-hearted and uncaring person. It is time for this country to acknowledge that decent health care is a right of all people. And the easiest and least expensive way to accomplish giving that right to all citizens is to establish a single-payer government-run health insurance system.
And hundreds of thousands more will be bankrupted and their financial futures destroyed because, even with health insurance, a major health crisis will deplete their savings and leave them deeply in debt due to medically related expenses not covered by insurance; expenses billed to them at usurious prices by medical providers making profits not regulated by "health care reform."
ReplyDeleteMore yet will die because "health care reform" continued to reduce payments to providers in the name of "bending the cost curve" so that more and more providers will decline to accept Medicare patients and result in them not being able to obtain treatment.
Very true! While Obamacare was a step in the right direction, it was only a tiny step. Much more remains to be done to fix our broken health care system.
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