Those who know me know that I am a supporter of reforming the healthcare industry and support the current reform bill to do so.  While there are some parts of the bill that I think could be improved, I see it as being the best option for the first steps in fixing a broken system that we’ve seen in the near-century since Theodore Roosevelt began trying to reform the system in the 1910′s.  There are those, not least of which are for-profit health insurance companies, that don’t like to recognize that the world is changing.  It is becoming a more humanistic place where we as a species don’t have to subscribe to the Darwinian philosophy that only the fittest survive; we fully have the resources, technology, and means to lift up those around us.  That’s what the rest of the world is doing, and it is a social responsibility for us to do the same.  I am only as good as the rest of us, and I am who I am because of who we all are.

I firmly believe that in a modern society affordable healthcare should be a right.  After all, we have the right to public education, the right to public police and fire services, and the right to public libraries.  I believe, though it is unfortunately not a part of the current legislation, that we should also have public healthcare.  It’s ridiculous that a fire truck will come to my home and put out a fire and I can have my belongings replaced by (required) home insurance, but I cannot be guaranteed that an ambulance will come to my house and save me from having a heart attack without financial ruin.  It’s kind of silly that health insurance is so predicated upon one’s employment.  That system arose almost by accident during the World War II years where employers were limited on how much they could offer new workers for salaries.  In lieu of the ability to offer workers financial incentive, they offered them healthcare incentives.  That practice has somehow stuck around and been perverted into what we have today.  There’s got to be a better way.  I’m hopeful that the legislation will pass and that in time there will be room for universal healthcare and a requirement that health insurance companies and hospitals be not for profit.

That said, the whole process of developing healthcare legislation has frustrated me.  It’s remarkable how the Republicans have utterly deadlocked Congress over the past year, using the filibuster twice as many times as the Democrats did when they were the minority.  It’s remarkable how they can rally their entire party to subscribe to a single, unwavering position rather than encouraging their party members to think for themselves and make their own decisions for the legislation.  I suppose that it’s easier to do that when your party is, to a considerable degree, payrolled by the health insurance industry.  It’s remarkable how the Right has taken every opportunity to hatefully associate buzzwords with the legislation without either addressing the bigger picture or acknowledging that the Republican party itself has used the very same techniques to pass its own quasi-controversial issues.  Republicans fired the parliamentarian in 2001 to pass the Bush tax-cuts; it was used by Republicans in 1996 to pass the welfare reform bill (which was incidentally considered to be major systemic reform).  While I’m not saying that the legislative process doesn’t need to change, don’t call a technique dirty, evil, and anti-American when you yourself used the same technique and praised its virtues just a few short years ago to pass legislation.  It is the pot calling the kettle black on an epic scale.  It just as improper for Republicans to completely deadlock the United States government  using the filibuster.  It was never intended to be used to that extreme degree.

The healthcare industry needs reform.  It has been demonstrably shown that since it was deregulated under Reagan in the 1980′s it has not only not become nimble and competitive, but has led to a decline in quality of healthcare compared to the rest of the world while increasing costs.  Capitalism, which not only promotes but rewards unbridled ambition and the crushing of others through fair or unfair means, makes for a terrible steward of such services.  I would also maintain in this respect that it’s Unchristian-like.  I cannot imagine Christ chanting, “no more handouts,” to the underprivileged or using a person’s pre-existing condition as justification to maintain profit while that person’s health continues to decline.  It’s time to play catch up with the rest of the world.  It’s time to regulate and improve the industry.  It’s time to offer something besides profit as the motivating factor for healthcare insurance companies to function.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 10:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.