Health Care Options
By Trevor K. McNeil
The Tangled Web of Healthcare
It has come to my attention that some potential leaders in the United States of America (a.k.a. “The Greatest Country in the World” and the a.k.a. “Free World”) are considering reform to their currently mostly private, insurance-only approach to healthcare. A system which allows for medical professionals, who have sworn an apparently empty oath to ‘do no harm’, deny America’s cutting edge medical technology to anyone who can’t pay. A situation from 1968 sounds laughable, but it is the system the Republicans want to return to. After being shot 3 times doctors refused to operate on Andy Warhol until he signed a check to cover the costs. The three bullets embedded in his torso notwithstanding. Yet there are many, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, who act as though the likes of Obama and Biden are proposing the revival of eugenics into mainstream practice.
Terror Tales
There are lots of stories, most with the flagrant exaggeration of a campfire terror tale, spoke by a drunk high schooler, about ‘state controlled medicine.’ A system, it should be noted, that has enjoyed great success in every industrialized, western nation, except America, since the 1940s. Even a small island nation like New Zealand easily out-paced the great and powerful U.S. of A. in terms of accessibility to medical care. New Zealand also reported better statistics than the U.S., on infant mortality rates and over-dose death rates. Do people have to wait? Yes. Then again most of them survived and there don’t tend to be people dying at home of burst appendix because they have no health coverage. Which is more than can be said for “the land of the free.”
Heads or Tails
I understand it can be hard to decipher all the terms. Terms like ‘single-payer’ and ‘public option’ are tossed around like frisbees in the summer. With little or no indication given as to what they actually mean. Fortunately, I have lived under all three systems and am, therefore, in a position to explain things to my ‘baseball and apple pie’ friends.
The British Way
Single-payer, is the simplest option. The National Health Service as it is used in Britain, Australia and New Zealand is an example of a single-payer system . Taxes are used to fund a nation-wide healthcare system under which all procedures are covered and the price of drugs are strictly controlled. A citizen doesn’t have to pay for anything from heart-surgery to massage therapy and dental work. There is still a dispensing fee for prescription drugs but it is set at six pounds and fifty pence. No matter what the drug might be. Though this is only after they turn fifteen and before they turn sixty five. Anyone under fifteen or over sixty-five gets even their drugs covered.
Group Price
Before the screams of “socialism!” and “why should I pay for everyone else’s health care?” It’s not socialism. Secondly, you’re not ‘paying for other people.’ The percentage of individual taxes used to fund the N.H.S. compared to the population of each nation, is so low, each taxpayer is barely covering their own costs. So, if anything, other people are paying for you. Much like when I had private insurance while in university, paid for with a percentage of my student fees. Roughly $25 per semester. Things are always cheaper on a group plan. There is also the option for fully private insurance, though only after opting out of the national system. It is not possible, however, to be in the national system and pay a little more to jump the line. It is one or the other.
Matter of Degrees
‘Public Option’ is the other probable option for government healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, supported by Joe Biden is similar to the system used in Canada. The Canadian system is administered by the provinces and funded by the federal government in which most procedures are covered to some degree. Vital things like surgery are always free. As are eye tests. Therapies such as massage are covered to a certain price-point but then the patient is on their own. Prescriptions aren’t standardized and it can be a crap-shoot as to which are covered and which aren’t. Glasses and dental aren’t covered at all. To help pick up the slack, there are various affordable private insurance companies, specifically designed to help supplement the national system.
Vision of the Future
Under Biden, the U.S. healthcare system will most closely resemble that of Canada. A tax-funded federal system covering the most vital procedures, with the Affordable Care Act for everything else and some control on drug prices, most likely going on a needs-based assessment. Not so scary after all.
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2018/01/14/myths-single-payer-health-care/
