The health service is a key topic of debate in the US, where Joe is currently visiting, so here he discusses the need for proper, public health care system, which is also very relevant here in Ireland.
Right across the United States, a debate is raging over the future of health care. The catalyst is President Obama’s election campaign pledge to deal with the dramatically increasing cost of healthcare and the fact that almost 50 million Americans do not have health insurance in a society where care is dominated by private insurance companies and ‘for profit’ medical corporations.
Joe Higgins speaking at a socialist meeting in the US
Nobody doubts there is a major problem. The current issue of Time Magazine relates how at a meeting on July 28, figures were laid out in front of Obama showing ‘what a sinkhole the country’s healthcare has become: the US spends more to get less that just about every other industrialised country.’ Life expectancy is lower and infant mortality higher than many other countries.
Obama is being vague about the exact shape of the package he wants to see implemented and the Senate and Congress failed to pass any legislation before the summer break.
Powerful vested interests, and especially private health insurance companies, are desperately trying to stop any changes to the current health care regime that would affect them negatively. Massive profits are made by the health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and private clinics and hospitals.
One insurance giant, United Health Group, has 70 million Americans on its books and made profits last year of $3 billion. Companies like this are lobbying furiously to minimise the effect on their profits of any new health care legislation.
In fact, they want to stop any legislation whatever according to Wendell Potter, a former executive with a health insurer, Cigna Corp., who left in disillusionment. Quoted last week in The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper he said that insurance companies ‘confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their investors.’ And he accused them of ‘pulling out all the stops to keep a public health plan from being made into law.’
Certainly the level of funds being spent by the health insurance industry and other big corporations involved in health care in lobbying to protect their interests is quite staggering. In the second quarter of 2009 alone the pharmaceutical industry spent $68 million on lobbying while the private health sector as a whole spent $263 million in the first half of the year.
Politicians also get substantial funding from private health care interests. According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, over the last ten years health and accident insurers gave $40 million to members of the US Congress
Hysterical claims abound in the current debate with former candidate for the Vice Presidency, Sarah Palin claiming that a new system would ration care to the elderly and disabled and says she does not want an America where ‘my parents or my baby with Downs Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s death panel so his bureaucrats can decide , based on a subjective judgement of the level of productivity in society whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.’ This echoes extreme right wing Republicans who claim that Obama wants the introduction of involuntary euthanasia!
Public meetings, known as ‘Town Hall meetings’, which are being held around the United States are hearing shrill opposition from a right wing ideological position to any idea of a public health care system . Democratic politicians who favour reform are claiming an orchestrated opposition campaign by the Republican Party and vested interests such as the insurance companies.
Advocates for a public health care system in the US and the Left argue for the elimination of the huge profit seeking corporations from the scene and the establishment of publicly owned and democratically controlled integrated health care system, providing quality health care for all, free at the point of delivery. They point out that the massive profits now being made from people’s health and the massive spending on lobbying and advertising would, if invested instead in actual care, make a huge difference.
Even sections of US big business want to see some significant reforms to curb the growing cost to them of workers healthcare. However, despite this and the fact that a New York Times/CBS poll showed 59% of ordinary Americans favouring comprehensive public health cover, there must be considerable doubt about the seriousness of the Democratic Party in pushing through a major overhaul. They seem to be even backing away from the idea of a State owned insurance company.
Obama’s election campaign also benefitted hugely from health industry donations with the Democratic Party as a whole receiving a gigantic $90 million from that quarter in 2008 alone. An all out assault on the corporate sector and its massive profits would be necessary to push through a proper public health care system in the US and, as a party wedded to big business, the Democrats are not going to do this.
Originally published in the Irish Daily Mail, where Joe has a column every Wednesday
CHECK OUT OTHER RELATED ARTICLES:
- Joe Higgins: “Fine Gael’s new Health Policy a Charter for Privatisation”
- Re-Print: Fine Gael’s new Health Policy a Charter for Privatisation
- VHI privatisation only entrenches the idea of a two-tier health system
- Privatisation of VHI as discredited as that of Telecom Eireann and Team Aer Lingus
- Re-print: Fine Gael’s “New Republic” is a privatised Republic
I live with the failed health care system in the United States; I thank you so much for your efforts here! I only wish your counsel didn’t fall on deaf ears!