My Case for Universal Healthcare

President Bush is threatening to veto a congressional spending bill that would increase the number of children eligible for State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

This is more than ironic if one takes into account that our president is adamant about rescuing our nation’s children from educational demise (No Child Left Behind), yet could care less if they receive adequate healthcare. Get smart, just don’t get sick... get it? Equally ironic (and hypocritical) is the fact that the president seems to have no problem letting the public foot the bill for his own medical coverage, yet is dead set against government involvement in healthcare for the rest of the country.

Consider that every government employee, from our military to paper pushers working for the IRS, is on some form or another of government healthcare. So government style, “socialized” medicine sucks for the everyday citizen but it’s perfectly fine for the military men and women who put their lives in harm’s way regularly (not to mention the Prez himself)? I’m not advocating “giving away the farm”, quite honestly I believe that the drains on society are already getting their “free”, universal healthcare or non. There’s got to be a better option than what we have now, as we taxpayers are funding indigent care claims and tax write-offs for non-payment anyway.

I’m a staunch supporter of capitalism, but it is impossible to quantify or monetize access to medical treatment. Adequate healthcare is a public good along the same lines as public safety, transportation, and education. That doesn't automatically make firemen, police officers, or teachers "Comrades". For that matter, the most popular universal healthcare plans don’t involve the government taking ownership of the delivery of medical care at all (the true definition of socialism). The key phrase is “single-payer”, not “socialized” care and private hospitals already bend over backwards to get that Medicare/Medicaid money, which is a de facto government funded single-payer enterprise (and nobody calls grandpa a commie for being on Medicare either).

To punch even more holes in “socialist medicine” mythology, you’d have to be in complete denial or extremely lucky to discount the myriad of hoops and rigmarole private insurers compel customers to negotiate in order to receive anything above an everyday regular doctor visit. The argument that service would be bogged down by bureaucracy holds no weight when care is already stymied by greedy insurance companies and their traffic-jamming, non-payment and/or pre-authorization requirement tactics, forcing individuals into a paperwork backlog that makes government pen pushers look like overachieving models of efficiency.

Lets not forget the federal government is already in the insurance business. How many of you socialist commie bastards are on the Fed’s Kool-Aid FEMA Flood Insurance Program? Hands? Who in their right mind could afford it any other way? Do we really need a Katrina-like catastrophe in the healthcare sector in order to see a real change?

Citizens shouldn’t face bankruptcy from a medical malady or postponement/neglect of vital medical treatment for purely financial reasons. There are a lot of ways our government wastes money, and without doubt, there’s room for collusion in healthcare. But is there a more noble or just cause for public funds than caring for the sick amongst us? I’m sure there’s more than one way to address this issue (and I personally invite all comers to an open discussion), but we can’t afford to stick our collective heads in the sand any longer. The only people left who fail to realize the dilemma in our healthcare system simply haven’t been victimized by it... yet.