Breaking my internet
connection-less silence for a brief moment from a cyber cafe, to reassure
my fellow American readers: universal health care is good for your health.
My inspiration for writing this truism comes from a glimpse - and it was only that; I am rather cut off from news sources at my current location - of poor Senator Arlen Spector fending off rabid reactionaries at a recent town hall meeting on health care reform. This item was presented on the evening French TV news as another example of the American eccentricity. Because for French people, the only argument about health care is how to maintain its already world class position. It's a given that everyone must have access to that care.
TPM recently carried a post by Jane B., an American in Paris who recounted her recent (and I take it, ongoing) encounter with cancer. Her real life account is another attempt to reassure Americans that their fears about supposed Stalinization of health care are unfounded.
The truth is that in many developed countries, people take health care, and its universal provision, for granted. It's just not a matter for debate - in Britain, even the opposition Conservatives consider the National Health Service to be a political third rail. Whatever the horror stories about long waits in Britain for NHS specialists, this much I know: if you are sick there, you will be treated, no questions asked.
As in other European countries, France has a national health insurance card, an attempt to rein in on needless care (the country consumes pills at an unhealthy rate). Politicians fret about the "hole" in the social security budget (of which health care is a part), the result of people gaming the system of benefits. But cheaters are everywhere, and stronger safeguards need to be instituted.
In the US, the gaming of the current hodgepodge of health care appears to be largely an insurance industry specialty. Create a maze of coverage options and insurance policies, interpose non-medical gatekeepers between patient and doctor, then impose horrendous paperwork requirements on the corner medical practice. In the name of what? Certainly not better health care results.
Back in Brussels, here is the situation when we need to see our neighborhood doctor: we go to her office, she gleans useful information during an initial chat, performs her examination, goes to her computer where our files are stored, and prints out prescription and receipt after charging us her fee (much cheaper than her US counterparts). No secretary, no mountains of paper folders in some sixties-era "retrieval system," just our doctor and her computer. According to a recent Business Week article, only 17% of American doctors have such an electronic records retrieval system.
What's scary about the current debate in the US is not President Obama's proposal, but the know-nothingism that he has inspired. Good health care for all should be in everyone's interest, right? Then why are we even debating about the very notion of universality? Check a little and you'll find that the manipulators, the reductionists of the absurd, are those with a vested interest in the status quo. Namely the medical insurance complex and their lobbyists and paid legislators.
Spurious issues have occupied the national consciousness before, but arguing over what other countries have long accepted as a human right shows how much the US is out of sync with the world. It's not that difficult, people. Follow Dr. Obama's prescription, and get a reality check. For your own health.