Universal Healthcare is good for business and good for all
10 March, 2009
By Cory Williams
What if other public services were run for profit like the American health care system?
Photo by Afonso Lima
Under our current system we are chained to our job that provides us access to the health care system (those that offer health care coverage but, that is another topic for another time). Those that wish to take the risk to start a business will, most likely, suffer a disruption in health coverage and access to the health care system. In order to recruit and retain good employees they must find a way to pay for a healthcare plan that equals or betters those plans of larger established businesses. If that cost was shared and shifted would it not allow for others to establish businesses? For current businesses, would not the enormous amounts of their budgets that are spent on healthcare be better used to grow their businesses? Would companies that cannot afford to offer coverage now compete for employees on a more level field?
I am not a business man but I have worked with and for them. I know the enormous costs of health care and I believe these professionals that work in the health care industry deserve to be paid well for their invaluable services. A key argument against a universal health care system is the intervention and consequence of government bureaucrats getting into the process both medically and financially. I do not believe government bureaucrats, with no medical training, deserve to have their hands in the health care pot any more than insurance industry employees, with no medical training, do. The problem is the latter is already happening. And they are doing it for profit.
The main concern some have with Health insurance companies, and a primary cause of health care’s incredible costs is, that health care has become a profit making industry. Before I am branded as a Socialist, Marxist, Communist, or any other term we now use to demonize those we disagree with I must say I have no problem with people making a profit. In fact, I encourage it! We live in a capitalist society. Our economy thrives on people investing money, making money on those investments, and then making more money. Our economy thrives on production and innovation of new technologies that make our life better and our country stronger. It is the system that has developed the inventions, innovations and technology we take for granted today. There are times and places for the practice of a profit model to occur. Health care is not one of them. Imagine if the local law enforcement operated on a profit driven model. Imagine if our education system operated on a profit model. These are valuable assets we, as a community, have deemed necessary and proper for our public good. Why then, do we allow the profit model to run our health care system? Should having access to treatments of illnesses, disorders, diseases and conditions be a privilege? Should this burden of cost be left only to employers, employees and not to the public as a whole? Is there not a benefit to society to have a healthy well cared for population? And the final question on this topic, does anyone else have a problem with shareholders making a profit on our health and well-being? Does anyone else have an issue with shareholders, CEO’s and other non-medical professionals earning their bonuses based on whether or not our children get the tests, therapy, surgeries, and medications they need?
This is an issue that should be looked at by employers and businesses as well as the countless individuals that are tied, like a millstone to the neck, to their job because they cannot afford to be without access to our health care system. Conservatives like to ask how many entrepreneurs have been lost to the tax burdens of small business. I would like to ask how many entrepreneurs have been lost due to the lack of a universal health care system.
Of course this will come with a cost but I find it hard to believe that the current amount of money we are paying in health care costs would be less than any additional costs to a universal health care system. The worst case scenario would be a zero-sum game. The nightmare scenarios we are told we will have if universal health care is enacted include waiting hours in the waiting room, waiting weeks and/or months for appointments and procedures, not getting to select our physicians, and/or specialists. In my experiences with our current system, I have already suffered these problems. As, I am sure, you have too.
Add to this the large number of our population without any health care. Many are paying out of pocket for medications and doctor bills, money that could also help grow other sectors of the economy. And when they don’t or can’t pay their bill, who pays for them when they receive services? Fairness is something that is near impossible to reach but, by spreading the cost and sharing in the benefit we can get a lot closer to fair than we are right now. We can also provide for a healthier, safer, more productive society that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren.
© 2009 Cory Williams
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