Primer: Health Care
Which candidate's plan is better for our kids?
by Kim Mance
October 20, 2008
While living abroad in Norway, I had my second baby. Everyone back in the States thought I was nuts. They even had me a little nervous. I'd always assumed socialized medicine was subpar, but that was not the case. The maternity ward was well equipped and the certified nurse midwives who attend all non-complicated births were awesome. The entire experience was thoroughly impressive. In fact, Scandinavia consistently ranks as the best place in the world to have a baby because of universal access to prenatal and infant medical care. The country has half the infant mortality rate of the U.S.
During our time in that country, where the government truly does run health care, my family never once experienced the long lines or waiting lists bemoaned by pundits and lobbyists who are against regulating our privatized health care system. My son was diagnosed with autism and received progressive and effective therapies. We actually had to convince doctors and nurses to find the necessary paperwork to bill our private insurance.
It was other-worldly. In a good way.
Neither presidential candidate's health care plan brings us anywhere near a true socialized medicine or single-payer system. But they do both point out the many ways our own health care structure can be improved.
The beginning of an organized medical care in the U.S. began when more than half of the country's doctors joined the newly formed American Medical Association in 1901. Due to their lobbying efforts, doctors were no longer expected to provide free services to anyone who walked into a hospital. In the 1930s, Blue Cross began providing private coverage for hospital visits, amidst wrangling within the Roosevelt Administration after passage of the Social Security Act, which omitted health insurance.
Both Roosevelt and Truman called for health care to be an "economic right." Truman then proposed a single-payer health program to cover all Americans. But it was called a "Communist plot" by a House subcommittee after the American Medical Association denounced it.
Wars, sacrifice and more political turmoil distracted the nation from worrying about health care. And by the 1960s, Americans were paying fully double the average cost of health care as compared to a decade earlier. Seven hundred private companies were now offering insurance and President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicaid and Medicare into law to cover seniors over sixty-five.
But this subsidized, mostly unregulated coverage caused medical costs (and profits) to run rampant and to rapidly inflate during the '70s. The Reagan Administration imposed more regulations, creating HMOs, and the 1980s saw private insurance companies integrate themselves into the health care industry. Their profits soared.
In the 1990s, the insurance industry launched attack ads on the Clintons' plan for health care reform and major news outlets ran stories questioning whether there was really a health care crisis. Congress failed to pass any reform of the industry under pressure from lobbyists and public opinion.
Today, the minimally regulated for-profit industry controlling our medical care has continued to prosper. Insurance premiums have increased 87% in the last six years while at the same time overhead and profit are the fastest-growing factors in health care costs. At this rate, the industry will comprise 20% of our overall economy within the next ten years.
While the worries about our economy grow, the issue of health care becomes even more entangled with our overall economic health. Half of all bankruptcies in this country are due to medical expenses.
In one breath, the presidential candidates lament the economic crisis, yet in the next, both promise to provide relief for all those in need of health care coverage. Sometimes in the midst of all the spin, the facts become unrecognizable.
©2008 Kim Mance and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Mance is a writer and über feminist based in Chicago. Besides being a workaholic, she spends her time running around after her three active children, two with special needs. She is co-editor of the politically-minded online women's travel magazine, Galavanting. |
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