health care

What's interesting about the health care debate is that here again massive corporations are stealing from the American people, this time by taking their overpriced insurance premiums, while often denying care based on dubiously enacted riders, unlawful interpretations of their coverage policies, and exemptions of so called preexisting conditions. Millions of Americans are without health care because it is simply unaffordable, which has resulted in the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year, and thus put into question our founding father's belief in American's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Yet this time the American people are clearly divided on the issue. It appears that the insurance giants were able to garner indirect support where Wall Street and the banks were not.

The American people are distrustful of their government, and with good reason. We've been grossly lied to and taken advantage of throughout the Bush administration. The Obama administration is not faring well either, with its ongoing spying on Americans, continuation of black torture sites like the one in Bagrahm, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan in spite of a call to peace among liberals and libertarians, and its unwillingness to actively pursue the investigation of well known and documented crimes of the previous administration. The question arises, why should we then trust this government to oversee our health care?

Unfortunately, because Western culture sees itself as separate from the environment, and has taken the position of the dominator of the world rather than as a co-creator or cooperator, and in the process committed genocide and enslavement toward indigenous cultures, we now rely upon complex hierarchies and technologies to maintain our health, rather than finding balance within the natural world. And while Americans enjoy a relatively high lifespan (though not the highest in the world) the imbalances created by this approach of feeling superior to others and justified to wage unilateral wars of aggression and commit human and environmental atrocities has left billions of other people impoverished in the aftermath of Western colonial domination and current neoliberal globalization. Such stratification of technology and power means that, if the current system is to continue on its course, the people with the knowledge, money, and power, who make the health care rules for the rest of the citizens, will be doing so within a cultural context of normalized corruption, greed, traumitization, and ruthlessness. Either the US government, a private or nonprofit corporation or corporations, or a combination of the two will necessarily administer our health care. If things do not change, Americans will have to trust their lives to some large and fallible entity within a system that stresses the importance of freedom yet is based on inequality and dominance.

Our current system is one dominated by the private insurance agencies, so the American people have decided to trust their lives to corporations. The problem with this is that corporations are motivated by profit. Therefore they will charge as much as they can get away with, and cut as many corners as they can, in order to maximize profits. Of course, they have to maintain their competitiveness against other corporations, and this is one of their major checks. But apparently those checks are not strong enough to prevent widespread abuse, fraud, and greed, within an industry that people are depending upon for their lives.

Health care managed by the government in a single payer fashion, so called socialized medicine or Medicare for all, would be run without profit motivation. It would not pay taxes. As a single system, it would be able to cut down on complex insurance billing overhead. It would not have to pay for expensive advertising campaigns. The result would create a far less expensive system that could be made available to all Americans. There are a variety of single payer systems throughout the Western world without the restrictions on physician choice or the unmanageable wait times that critics cite. The main concern would be the loss of jobs for people working within the health insurance industry. This prospect is unsettling during a time of economic crisis, but would occur even as millions of uninsured Americans, including those unemployed from a loss of the health insurance sector, would suddenly have access to health care.

While we have a rightful distrust of our government, much of that distrust, whether we realize it or not, is being fostered by the collusion between big government and big business. At this stage in the game, it is not one or the other, but the cooperation, either active or passive, between the two spheres, that is responsible for the injustices we are facing today. These are the two power players that together have the ability to take advantage of everyone else. By creating a single payer system, we eliminate that cooperative dynamic. We eliminate not only the insurance industry, but also the insurance industry lobby. This means we are taking away corporate influence, which is currently being used to finance campaigns in order to maintain corporate dominance and make sure that single payer doesn't get enacted or even meaningfully debated, and which is also being used to treat corrupt politicians to nice excursions and lucrative jobs after their terms have ended.

For those who are concerned about a move toward a socialist State that will erode our freedoms, consider the fact that our health care system is already a mess. The financially indebted working class, middle class, working poor, and impoverished, already are, to varying degrees, slaves to the system. Single Payer health care will take the profit motivation out of the equation while cutting costs and providing health care for millions who don't have it. The Federal government certainly retains its own self interests, and it will be up the people to stay active and make sure it is properly run. But these interests in the sphere of health care will no longer reflect entrenched money and a revolving corporate door. They will be found instead in government posts, which will greatly shrink the administrative bureaucracy of private insurance, and will be more unified, streamlined, and cost effective.

Staying active in health care administration is something that we cannot currently do because health insurance policies right now are set by private companies whose policies we can't directly vote on. Policies enacted by the government would likely not be up for a vote either, but we can at least vote out leaders and influence decision making by contacting representatives. In the private sector, individuals can indirectly influence corporations through consumer choices. If there are negligent industry wide practices, however, choosing another corporation is a false choice, and therefore our power currently is very limited. In addition, there are often only a handful of accepted insurance companies that doctor's offices will recognize, making consumer choice even more limited.

Because many people seem to think that if we keep private insurance competing on an open market, freedom, capitalism, and democracy will be preserved, we have basically remained complacent and uninformed even as thousands of people are bankrupted by health care costs. The poor and middle class people who are opposed to socialized medicine have no real influence over our system, and are willing to trust multi-billion dollar corporations and the free markets. This mindset is far more geared toward victimization by the powerful than an informed citizenry who has universal coverage but also remains engaged with the government that administers it. A complacent populace in the face of universal health coverage could be victimized, of course, but a complacent populace in any scenario will also lose their freedoms.

The public option is being put forth in order to create a non profit competitor with private insurance companies, with the hope that it will drive down private insurance prices without forcing people to subscribe to a particular program. Whether or not this public option will actually bring down prices remains unclear, as it will not be as radically sweeping as a single payer plan. Many on the left say that we need to get a public option because otherwise we are essentially giving into the power of the very corporations that are holding us hostage.

In fact, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who has received heavy campaign donations from the insurance industry, has put forth a bill that includes no public option, creates ineffectual health cooperatives, and fines people who do not purchase health insurance. This of course is a terrible plan, catering directly to the insurance industry by forcing millions of new customers in a broken for profit system.

This type of proposal makes the left cling even tighter to the public option, but my concern is that if the public option does not deliver, then single payer, which would disrupt the corporate stranglehold on American health, will be even further from reality. Obama and Waxman both have stated, along with others on the left, that single payer would be better, but it is politically unfeasible. Rather than championing what many Americans have demanded and what they claim to believe is a superior method of delivery, they are creating, not reflecting the current reality of political unfeasibility for single payer. By stating again and again that single payer is better than the public option but unfeasible, they are giving single payer advocates a little nod while establishing the very climate which will make the single payer option impossible. As a result, if you talk to people on the left campaigning for health care reform, many of them will just parrot the administration by saying yes single payer is better, but its politically unfeasible. Rather than seizing on the opportunity to make some real change, they are entrenching a movement that will prevent the realization of singe payer.

This whole so called health insurance debate has been a sham on both the left and right, with the right firmly siding with the industry, and the left, taking massive donations from the insurance industry, preventing any discussion around single payer until the last minute and otherwise making single payer unfeasible even for public debate, while offering industy friendly compromises such as Baucus's bill.

The reality is that while single payer would eliminate half of the power equation and with an empowered populace, the people could hold sway over the other half, the government, to make sure it does what it's supposed to do, single payer is instead being stymied by the government, the insurance industries, and those who believe it would represent a socialist paradigm shift.
What will likely emerge will be a mixed bag compromise which may or may not work, and quite possibly have significant concessions for the insurance industry, and leave the American people in the lurch. The entire process of moving slowly further and further toward the industry demands has fueled a very surface level of empowerment on the right wing and a sense of bewildered desperation on the left, who hold a majority in congress and are led by a widely popular (at least initially) Democratic president, but still appear to be on the retreat. The real problem is the fact that the insurance industry has a stronger hold in the Republican party, but is still highly influential among the Democrats. Again the people will be left to fend for themselves.

So it comes down to getting politically active, voicing support for single payer if you think it's the right choice, while at the same time becoming less dependent on the government. It sounds contradictory, but it is the way to become the check and balance to the Federal government, a power which cannot be leveraged against private industry without costly, time consuming lawsuits. Become more critical, more self sufficient, more empowered, even as you demand medicare for all. Make your opinions widely known. If single payer does not pass, so be it. It certainly has a lot of opposition among the entrenched interests, but there are plenty of people who understand its benefits. The most important piece right now, though, is to get empowered, so that if single payer does in fact pass, it will be closely monitored by the people at large, and it will truly, then, belong to the people.

Such a radical shift toward single payer in such a volatile time seems scary, especially in a climate of distrust for the powers that be. What will likely be the real game changer in this country, if we are in fact able to pull out of this fearful and divided time, will be grass roots change. In the case of health care, as well as the environment which is already under attack by similar methods perfected in the health care "debate," necessary citizen empowerment can mean producing your own organic food. Eating healthy means living healthy, which is how we wean ourselves away from big industry and big government. If America dropped its addictions to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, GMO and otherwise unhealthy foods, and television, all of which come from our dependency on corporations, and started eating well and exercising more, you can bet health care costs would plummet, and people would feel more empowered and better about their lives. If exercise included the work done growing your own food, society would organically shift toward more active, aware, and integrated households and communities, as local barter systems, garden associations, and farmers markets would flourish and grow independent, empowered, self aware, and environmentally aware citizens, who would derive their information not only from reading about it, but by living it. This goes back to the notion that the system itself, based on power imbalance, is creating friction and suffering. Growing our own food puts health and environmental control more firmly in the hands of citizens, and serves as a tool to unite us against the greed and entrenched power of governments and corporations, while making them less necessary for our own daily functioning.