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The year was 2001. I woke up one early spring morning with a terrible shortness of breath, gasping for air and unable to get control over my breathing. My parents rushed me to one of our local hospitals, and we checked into the emergency room. I was having serious problems breathing (we later discovered that I had a bad case of bronchitis)... naturally, you'd expect that the hospital would take me immediately, right? Three hours. That's how long they made me wait in the waiting room. It wasn't terribly busy that day. There weren't a dozen gourneys with gunshot or car accident victims rushing about. I remember seeing a lady with two kids, one of which had scraped his elbow pretty bad, and that seemed to be the worst case in the emergency room that day. Perhaps something was going on behind the doors? After three hours of waiting and a few visits from a very understanding and caring nurse, I was finally able to get in. Was it busy in the back? No. That's when we found out that my dad's insurance company was processing my information. They'd caused a massive delay, where I was sitting in a hospital waiting room for three hours having a very difficult time breathing. This is only one of four distinct instances of negative personal experiences with our healthcare system in the United States.
But according to the opponents of universal healthcare (IE. "Socialized Medicine"), my experience was nothing compared to what people in France, England, or Canada need to deal with. According to them, I'd have waited much longer, recieved much worse service, and have left the hospital sicker than I was when I entered. But are these Senators, Governors, and field professionals dismissing universal healthcare because they honestly believe it's going to hurt us? Or are they dismissing the idea because insurance companies would lose out with a universal system in place? Are they worried about my health, or the health of Wall Street? With limited resources, I've decided to head out onto the internet to find some answers.
According to the World Health Organization's rankings in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th out of 190 countries. Countries that ranked higher than the USA include France (1st), the United Kingdom (18th), and -- yes, it's true -- Canada (30th). It's easy to find people who oppose citing the WHO's rankings, but these arguements are always coming from the strongest opposers of universal healthcare, and their bias is forcing me to ignore their complaints. At any rate, the healthcare of the United States and Canada are always the most carefully scrutinized, so let's compare those here as well. A study conducted in 2007 by the Open Medicine Journal says that Americans spend more on healthcare per capita than Canadians -- $5,635 versus $3,003. Life expectancy is higher in Canada, and infant mortality is lower. But it's not all fantastic... There's a healthcare professional shortage in Canada, which lends to the infamous wait times for care, where 24% of Canadians complain of waiting four hours for care... a full hour longer than I had to wait when I had bronchitis back in 2001.
Statistics for and against universal healthcare are easily found on the internet, and they're always cited in these debates. But what's the bottom line? In the United States, 47 million citizens (8.7 million of whom are children) are not insured. The population of the United States? 304 million. That's a pretty remarkable chunk of our population... a little over 15.4%. Why do they not have health insurance? Because insurance is extremely expensive (especially for lower and middle class citizens), with an inflation rate several times higher than the national average. Small businesses can barely afford it, and bigger corporations cut corners with health insurance costs wherever and whenever they can. How could this situation possibly get any worse? Insurance companies do everything they can to avoid payment on claims, going so far as to cancel policies when a patient gets sick. So my next question is this: Which is worse? Waiting for good healthcare, or dying from poor healthcare?
Healthcare in the United States is terrible. I'm sorry, but it needs to be said. Capitalism has proven time and time again to fail the health service industry. A corporation shouldn't decide if you get care or not. The popular arguement is that the government can't efficiently run a hospital, and that patients would suffer, but statistics and facts very easily counter this arguement.
I'm a proud citizen of the United States of America, but conservatives try to paint proponents of universal healthcare as un-American; as disloyal expatriots. Why? Because we don't have faith in the private sector? The insurance corporations are literally killing Americans every single day. The same people who tell us we can't get rid of the insurance companies are the same people who argue against regulating them. These people are telling you that you can't improve the system in any way, that you shouldn't want to improve it, and that it doesn't need to be improved. They are horrifically wrong by all standards.
I have a better idea. Instead of complaining about and arguing against the notion of universal healthcare in the United States, let's adopt it, and put the full might of American ingenuity to work for us (something we haven't done in quite some time, I should add). Let's put our creativity and passion into fixing the problems in Universal Healthcare, and let's transform it into a uniquely American system. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of humans walking on the face of the moon. Are you telling me that in 2009, we can't adopt Universal Healthcare and fix it up to suit our needs? I'm not saying it would be an easy task. I'm saying it would be a landmark achievement, something Americans can be genuinely proud of. The effort alone would create countless jobs, would force new ideas to the table, and would show other countries that we took something of theirs and re-built it into something better. We didn't invent the automobile. We didn't invent rocketry. But we most certainly progressed those fields considerably.
When you argue against universal healthcare, you're not arguing to support your beliefs. You're arguing to support insurance companies that wouldn't return the favor if you were injured in a serious accident or fell ill with the plague. You're arguing against our country's ability to adopt something and improve on it, as we've done with so many other things. But worst of all, you're arguing against the better health of your fellow Americans.
So, is Universal Healthcare evil? No, it isn't. It's certainly flawed, but that's something we could most definitely fix. Insurance companies have proven to us that they care very little about us. Why should we continue to put up with their abuse? What will it take for us to realize what they're doing to us? Universal healthcare isn't evil. But insurance companies most certainly are.
