I have been curating essays from the first iteration of Freedom and Reason. Here I curate one that represents my opposition to the Republican Party in which I conclude with the type of anti-worker rhetoric I have come to loathe in others. To be sure, the Republican Party was much worse than it is now, but I need to acknowledge that I have been guilty of a type of ad hominem attack that belittled ordinary Americans and I regret that.
Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, said the debate over coverage of children (SCHIP or State Children’s Health Insurance Program) was “a proxy fight” between advocates for two competing visions. “This is only the first battle in this Congress over who will control health care in America. Will it be parents, families and doctors? Or will it be Washington bureaucrats? That’s what this debate is all about.”
Okay, assuming that you don’t immediately see the problem with what he said, the choice Jeb sets before his listeners is a completely false one. Indeed, when you think about it, it’s a ridiculous argument. Why? Because families and doctors don’t control health care in America—corporate bureaucrats control our health care! And, unlike Washington bureaucrats, corporate bureaucrats work for private tyrannies that aren’t answerable to public grievances. In a democratic society, when the government controls health care that means that families and doctors control health care instead of private tyrannies. (Go here for an excellent discussion about the private tyrannies we call corporations.)
The real choice is between whether you want families and doctors to control health care in a process in which everybody participates in making decisions or whether you want corporations to run health care in a process that they control. The choice is between universal health care, in which every American has access to affordable, high-quality health care, on the one hand, and corporations running health care for profit, denying services to make a buck, and refusing to cover millions of people who can’t afford to pay (who are often nonetheless take care of with the cost of that care dumped on other patients), on the other hand. It’s a clear choice. It would be irrational for the majority of Americans to pick the latter.
There’s more that Jeb and his ilk gloss over. Most US citizens have health insurance through their employers. Health insurance is typically part of a benefits package employees receive when they are hired. Providing health care to employees saves employers money because their size and their ability to decide for their employees allows them to buy group-rate insurance more cheaply than their employees can. If employees purchased their own health care, then wages would have to increase sharply to make those purchases possible. Since the source of profit is mainly derived from the value produced by workers, capitalists will aggressively resist raising wages for this to happen. Moreover, because capitalists can deduct insurance costs on their taxes, and since corporations are only taxed on their income (profits), being able to deduct health insurance costs represents a tax subsidy. The evidence shows that at the system level, this arrangement is actually bad for business, but business consciousness doesn’t operate at that level, rather it operates at the firm level, where rational behavior is often in contradiction with what’s best at the system level (which is the reason why capitalism without massive state intervention is so erratic and self-destructive).
Now, what do we the citizen get for a system that is heavier on the private side than the public side than any other advanced democracy? The advanced countries have more practicing physicians, more nurses, and more acute care hospital beds per 1000 population than the US does. The advanced countries have better health care outcomes than does the United States, and these other countries do it while spending much less on health care (a gap that is growing rapidly, as health care costs in the United States sky rocket), while covering every one of their citizens (45 million US citizens aren’t covered under the current system, a number that grows everyday, as workers are priced out of the system). Better care for everyone for less money?! Wow! How do they do it? Simple – they turned the financing of health care over to the government.
Before you get confused by propaganda slogans launched from those quarters that don’t want you to have affordable high quality health care, let me emphasize the point that we aren’t talking about “socialized medicine,” where the government actually runs the health care profession. On the contrary, we are talking about a single payer financing mechanism, like they have in Canada, Sweden, and other countries. There, health care is still run by health care professionals, but the government finances health care without the aim to make a profit. Taking profit out of the system means that everybody can be covered with lots of money left over, which means the amount we all pay for health care is sharply reduced. How much money left over? Estimates show that if the US had a universal public run health care system we would save more than a trillion dollars over a 10 year period. (And with the costs of the Iraq War, we need that one trillion plus dollars!)
Estimates for the cost of administering the private system—the corporate bureaucracy, which puts government bureaucracy to shame in red tape—is estimated to run well over 300 billion dollars every year. This is because of the incredibly complex nature of private health insurance, a complexity that is sharply reduced in single payer systems. To compare, while administrative costs run more than 30 percent in the United States, administrative costs in Canada are about half that. You find similar things in other countries.
There are many other benefits with government-financed health care. With a single payer mechanism, you not only get better and cheaper health care, but you get to choose your provider and you have portability, which means that you don’t lose your health care when you are fired from a job or leave a job for a better one. Hospitals and physicians offices save money because they don’t have to wade through the tangle of insurance company red tape. What is more, doctors get to control their practice again.
Still the Republicans spew all manner of falsehood to scare you away from the system that makes the best sense for individuals and corporations (except private insurance companies). Representative Pete Sessions of Texas said of the SCHIP program that it’s an “attempt to make millions of Americans completely reliant upon the government for their health care needs.” Senator Mel Martinez of Florida said the SCHIP bill would move the United States towards “socialized health care, a Cuban-style health care system, with rationing of care, long waiting lines and, worse yet, no choice.” These are complete lies.
I have never understood why any rational ordinary American would support the Republican Party. Not only do they lie continuously, but they stand completely opposed to the everyday concerns and interests of the working man and woman and their children. The Republican Party is anti-worker and anti-family. They believe in big government in our bedrooms and corporate control over our lives, but they oppose citizens using government to improve the lives of their families. It’s astonishing the degree to which Republican propaganda has confused Americans as to what is really in the citizens interests.
freedom and reason 