Democratic Oak Tree

Our country was founded on a constitution promoting “the general Welfare,” yet we the People have a tragic history of refusing to create a health care system for ourselves.

Is it because those with good health insurance haven’t been worried about anyone else? Is it because voters have been scared by the myth of “socialized medicine”? Is it because of the political power of the for-profit insurance industry?

Many Americans have excellent health care because they get good insurance through their employers. Some very rich Americans have excellent care because they pay for it privately.

But the number of uninsured Americans is shocking, and it continues to grow. According to a report by the respected Kaiser Foundation, “Nearly 47 million Americans under the age of 65 lacked health insurance coverage in 2006, an increase of 2.1 million from the year before.” (The reason the report uses statistics for those under 65 is that Medicare—even though it doesn’t pay for preventive care—makes such a difference to the health of those it covers.)

It will be painful to learn how many more Americans lost health insurance in 2007 and 2008.

Many who do have insurance discover it’s inadequate. The numbers are hard to come by, but over time—until we finally adopt a health care system—more of us will likely fall into this category, postponing preventive care and recommended procedures because of out-of-pocket costs.

One measure of a nation’s health is the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births. Our ranking is shameful – of 221 countries, we are in 42nd place.

Our non-system of health care has a devastating impact on the lives of uninsured children.

According to the Kaiser report, 26% of uninsured children have no usual place of care; 17% postponed seeking care because of cost; 12% had their last contact with a health care professional more than two years ago; 23% had unmet dental needs, and a whopping 37% hadn’t visited the dentist for more than two years. Since most are in families that can’t afford insurance, those kids who do manage to get better medical care are probably benefiting from painful sacrifices in other important areas of their family’s life.

Recently President Bush vetoed an expansion of Medicaid insurance for children (S-Chip). Congress couldn’t override the veto because most Republicans supported the President, even though Democrats had worked with a number of Republicans to make the legislation more palatable to Republican philosophy. Meanwhile, Bush’s budget for 2008—while touting an increase in dollars—would not cover all of the children already enrolled.

If we had a real system of health care, all Americans could receive good health care as a basic right.

The system could emphasize prevention, both because we want to improve the health of all Americans and because we need to reduce the long-term expense of preventable disease.

The system could replace the inefficiencies in billing that add billions to the cost of American health care.

The president of Johns Hopkins University, who gave an informative speech last fall, reported that at “the Johns Hopkins Hospital we have to bill more than 700 different payers and insurers. These are HMOs, PPOs, MCOs, IPAs and an alphabet soup of other organizations. Each one has their own set of rules regarding what services are covered, the level of reimbursement and what kind of documentation and pre-approval is required. It is an administrative nightmare.”

The patchwork quilt of health care in our country has become so tattered—more full of holes and yet more costly to provide every year—that there is pressure from powerful forces, including big business, to do something about it.

The devil will be in the details.

If a Democrat is elected President this fall with a strong Democratic majority in the House and Senate, the solution won’t be modeled on the confusing and expensive Medicare prescription drug program designed by President Bush and the Republican Congress. If you’re a senior, you’ve probably been baffled by differences among the private-sector plans and shocked at the increased premiums. If you’re a senior whose health depends on costly drugs, you know how unfair and painful that “doughnut hole” is.

If working for the common good becomes a priority for the White House and Congress as a result of Democrats gaining power this fall, let’s adopt a real system of health care which will promote the “general Welfare.”

Consider one dictionary definition of the word system: “the state or condition of harmonious, orderly interaction.”