public health
Gurumurthy K
Healthcare shouldn't be a messy political fight to begin with: it's an issue of basic human rights. And what all too often gets lost in these scuffles are the people most in need.
Our police forces, fire departments, libraries, and even our military are all socialist institutions. Few people would argue for the idea of a private fire department that refuses to rescue people from their home because the fire itself is a "pre-existing condition." So why would we ever frame the issue of healthcare differently, when it's exactly the same thing?
I've watched patients die from preventable conditions because they couldn't afford treatment. In nursing homes, sick people are warehoused into less-than-adequate conditions, with families forced to pay yearly costs of $90,000 a year to put their loved one in a shared room where they and the 30+ other patients on their unit will be taken care of by only two aides. Because of money issues, people lose limbs that they shouldn't need to lose. Patients decline when they shouldn't have to. An increasing number of people don't go to the doctor, even when they develop terrifying symptoms such as mysterious lumps in their throat, because they just can't afford it.
Something has to change. Looking at other countries, the practical solution is universal healthcare -- preferably a single-payer system.
Though some politicians might argue differently, universal healthcare isn't a radical idea. The majority of Americans actually support the concept. In the rest of the developed world it isn't even an argument, it's a given. Of the 25 wealthiest nations in the world, the United States is the only one that doesn't have it. The majority of these countries use single-payer. Even countries like the Netherlands -- with its "managed chaos" form of healthcare -- are still universal.
The United States has the highest health expenditure per capita of any country. With all that money being spent, you'd figure that we're all super-healthy -- but not really.
In the latest survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which assessed 13 developed nations including Norway, Australia, and the U.K., the USA had the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of infant mortality, and scarily high rates of heart disease and amputation as a result of diabetes. Of all the developed countries in the world, the United States possesses the dubious distinction of having both the most expensive healthcare system in the world -- and the least effective.
Guru