10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care

For any nurse who takes the attitude that "people who want health coverage should go to school and get a good job, like I did", let me just offer a few thoughts:

1. There are and always will be a lot of jobs needed in the world that are relatively low paying jobs, require relatively little schooling to do and give the workers who do them relatively little bargaining leverage. The people who cook your restaurant meals, pick up your garbage, clean your hotel room, perhaps care for your child while you are at work. Most of those jobs today do not offer health insurance. Are you, as a nurse, content that those people should die when they get sick? Are you, as a nurse content that a cancer diagnosis should be an automatic death sentence for them? Are you content that they should have no access to things like treatment for high blood pressure or diabetes? Do you believe that people who do those jobs, who work long hours for low pay, are less a human being than you? Less deserving of life than you?

Or if that just went right by you, try it this way:
2. As more and more Americans are added to the 45 million who have no health coverage and the 15 million more whose coverage is so bad they can't afford to use it, do you think that somebody will start to say something like this: "The reason we can't afford care is that all those nurses are making such high salaries and such good benefits. We need to cut those nurse wages so the rest of us can afford to get care." Have you not noticed the way that government workers are blamed for high taxes? The constant pressure to cut their wages and benefits? How lone will it take, how many people without care, before they come after us?

Or, if that doesn't do it for you, try this:
3. Of the 29 richest countrie in the world, the US spends about twice as much on healthcare as the others, on average and gets no better results on any scale one can measure. And the US is the only one in which private insurance plays a central role. You can have your scare stories, I'll take actual data.

So whichever works for you: simple humanity, self interest, or logic and reason, the answer is the same.

Spot on, David!
No human being can thrive when isolated from others. Everyone's life has value and meaning.
As I was reading your response to our fellow blogger, I hope your compassion doesn't fall on blind eyes and deaf ears. Millions are without access, and over a hundred thousand die each year of preventable illness in this country. No decent and compassionate society should fail to provide health care to it's members. Universal access to health care or lack thereof, says something about our society's moral character.

John Donne's oft quoted verse comes to mind in the context of this discussion about universal health care. (Although personally I would prefer the more inclusive term "human", as opposed to man, or mankind, I believe the meaning is clear.)

"As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I especially appreciated one of your other posts on this subject where you stated, in effect, that the best way to insure that the benefits of health care would be there for you, would be to work to make sure that everyone had access to health care when they needed it.

I believe in capitalism, not socialism.

And how is that working for ya?!

I believe the current economic crisis in the US has been shown to be a direct result of a lack of regulation.

National health care means the costs will be spread to all Americans, regardless of your health or your need for medical care, which is fundamentally unfair. Your health is greatly determined by your lifestyle. Those who exercise, eat right, don't smoke, don't drink, etc. have far fewer health problems than the smoking couch potatoes. Some healthy people don't even feel the need for health insurance since they never go to the doctor. Why should we punish those that live a healthy lifestyle and reward the ones who don't?

An uncle had afib. They refused to do an ablation on him because he was a smoker. He was in his 50's when he died.

Talk to the people who have UHC, they don't share your opinons either.

Capitalism is all well and good in many areas, however, there is no denying that the spirit of capitalism is to maximize profits while minimizing expenses. This is exactly what we're seeing right now with private insurance. Their main goal is not to provide patient care, but to minimize expenses [by denying as many claims as they can], thus increasing profits. This mentality will not change by making health care "affordable" for all. If anything, this will only encourage insurance companies to cut coverage even more [as a way to maximize profits], because they are collecting less in premiums. Is this really the kind of motivation we want in the people providing our health care? So many people just slap the label of "socialism" [as if its a 4 letter word] on universal health care and actually think it's a good argument for their position. It is not. Look where capitalism has gotten us in regards to health care. There are certain issues in society that should not be about money, because they are more important than dollars and cents could ever be.

Look where capitalism has gotten us in regards to health care. There are certain issues in society that should not be about money, because they are more important than dollars and cents could ever be.

"If the universal coverage and single-payer features of the Canadian system were applied in the United States, the savings in administrative costs alone would be more than enough to finance insurance coverage for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured," the report written by the G.A.O. says.

The NHP would benefit most Americans, though a few powerful interest groups would suffer. It would virtually eliminate financial barriers to care for those who are currently uninsured and underinsured, ensure patients a free choice of providers, ensure physicians a free choice of practice settings, diminish bureaucratic interference in clinical decision making, stabilize health spending, and reduce the growing burden of health care costs for many individuals and employers.

Although few dispute the ability of the NHP to provide universal coverage and control costs, critics have raised the specter of rationing, pointing to queues for some high technology services in Canada.42 We do not advocate cutting US health spending to Canadian levels. Even with a slower rate of growth under the NHP, US health expenditures will remain well above those of any other nation. Deploying our greater resources with Canadian efficiency would permit increases in utilization and improvements in technology without skyrocketing costs.

The objectives of the NHP are simple: (1) to minimize financial barriers to appropriate medical care, (2) to distribute costs fairly, and (3) to contain costs at a reasonable level. Once a structure is in place for meeting these basic concerns, the medical profession and society as a whole can move on to the more complicated questions: Which health services truly improve the quality of life? What share of our human and material re sources should we devote to health care? How shall we reduce the toll now extracted by poverty, ignorance, and addictions? By implementing a national health program, we can turn and face the challenges ahead.