[ It’s true that the number of uninsured Americans has dropped
to an all-time low. But that fact obscures the failures of our
patchwork, profit-driven health care system.]
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AMERICANS WANT GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE—WHAT’S STANDING IN THE
WAY?  
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Sonali Kolhatkar
January 29, 2023
Independent Media Institute
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_ It’s true that the number of uninsured Americans has dropped to
an all-time low. But that fact obscures the failures of our patchwork,
profit-driven health care system. _

, National Nurses United

 

Here’s one of many indicators about how broken the United States
health care system is: Guns seem to be easier and cheaper to access
than treatment for the wounds they cause. A survivor of the recent
mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, reportedly said to Gov.
Gavin Newsom
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he needed to keep his hospital stay as short as possible in order to
avoid a massive medical bill. Meanwhile, the suspected perpetrator
seemed to have had few obstacles in his quest to legally obtain a
semi-automatic weapon
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commit deadly violence.

Americans are at the whim of a bewildering patchwork of employer-based
private insurance plans, individual health plans via a government-run
online marketplace, or government-run health care (for those lucky
enough to be eligible). The coverage and costs of plans vary
dramatically so that even if one has health insurance there is rarely
a guarantee that there will be no out-of-pocket costs associated with
accessing care.

It’s hardly surprising then that the latest Gallup poll
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health care affirms what earlier polls have said: that a majority of
Americans want their government to ensure health coverage for all. In
fact, nearly three-quarters of all Democrats want a government-run
system.

Gallup also found
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a record high number of people put off addressing health concerns
because of the cost of care. Thirty-eight percent of Americans said
they delayed getting treatment in 2022—that’s 12 percentage points
higher than the year before. Unsurprisingly, lower-income Americans
were disproportionately affected.

Women are especially impacted, with more women than men delaying
treatment as per the same Gallup poll. The findings were consistent
with results
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by researchers at New York University’s School of Global Public
Health—that women’s health care was increasingly unaffordable,
compared to men’s—in a study that solely focused on
people _with_ employer-based health coverage. Imagine how
out-of-reach health care is for uninsured women.

Added to that, Republican-led abortion bans
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made it even harder for American women to obtain reproductive health
care. On the 50th anniversary of the recently overturned Supreme Court
decision _Roe v. Wade_, abortion providers in Massachusetts
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for example, reported a steady stream of people driving to their
state—one where abortion remains legal—to access care.

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party appear to think that this
grim status quo is perfectly acceptable. Democrats’ reliance on the
Obama-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a xxxxxx against Republican
opposition to any government intervention in health care seems to be
resoundingly successful—on paper. In December 2022, Biden touted the
fact that 11.5 million Americans, a record high number
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had signed up for ACA plans during the last enrollment period. He
said, “Gains like these helped us drive down the uninsured rate to
eight percent earlier this year, its lowest level in history.”

His administration, rather than working to fulfill what a majority of
his party’s constituents want—a government-run health care
system—has continued instead to tweak the ACA by extending a period
of discounted monthly premiums for private insurance plans. Such
tweaks are not permanent. Neither are they a panacea for accessing
adequate care. If anything, they are a façade protecting profit-based
private insurance companies.

A survey
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the Commonwealth Fund found that although the number of insured
Americans is now at an all-time high, more than 40 percent of those
who bought ACA plans and nearly 30 percent of those with
employer-based plans were underinsured—that is, the plans were
inadequate to cover their health care needs.

By focusing solely on the number of people who had health plans as a
measure of success, the White House is participating in a great
coverup of the ongoing American health care tragedy.

Meanwhile, just over the horizon from Biden’s celebration of record
numbers of ACA signups is the fact that millions of people currently
enrolled in the Medicaid government health plan could lose access
because of the end of an emergency provision
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allowed for “continuous enrollment.” That provision expires at the
end of March 2023. If all Americans were automatically enrolled in
government-provided health care regardless of eligibility, this would
not be a concern.

Right-wing sources, so terrified that too many Americans want a
government-run health system, are busy shaping public opinion against
it. The Pacific Research Institute’s Sally Pipes published an op-ed
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how Canada’s national health system was a good reason why the U.S.
should not have a similar program. Using the deadly logic of a free
marketeer, she wrote, “In Canada, health care is ‘free’ at the
point of service. As a result, demand for care is sky-high.”

The implication is that charging people for service would reduce the
demand, just as it would for, say, an electric vehicle. In Pipes’
world, people are accessing health care just for fun, and if they were
charged money for it, their ailments might resolve themselves without
treatment.

The Heritage Foundation
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published an attack on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS),
gleefully claiming that it is “cratering,” and warning that it is
a lesson for American liberals who might support a similar
“single-payer” system in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board published a similar
warning
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claiming that the NHS was “failing patients, with deadly
consequences.”

It’s puzzling why the Pacific Research Institute, Heritage
Foundation, and Wall Street Journal appear unconcerned about
the 330,000 Americans who lost their lives
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the COVID-19 pandemic simply because they don’t live in a nation
with a universal health care program.

The U.S. spends nearly twice as much
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capita on health care than other comparable high-income nations.
According to Health Affairs
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excessive administrative costs are the main reason for this
discrepancy—these are nonmedical costs associated with delivering
health care in a patchwork system of employer-based private health and
publicly subsidized plans. In fact, “administrative spending
accounts for 15–30 percent of health care spending.”

Again, right-wing media outlets and think tanks appear unconcerned by
this disturbing fact. They only want to convince Americans that a
government-run health plan is a bad idea. And, sadly, the Democratic
Party leaders like Biden seem to agree implicitly.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers together with Healthy
California Now created an online calculator
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individuals to determine how much money they would save if the U.S.
had a single-payer system.

I have an employer-based health care plan that is considered very
good. Using the calculator, I determined that I would save more than
$16,000 if California, the state where I live, had a single-payer
system. That’s money I could be saving for my children’s higher
education or for my retirement.

The victims of mass shootings, like the Half Moon Bay survivor, are
saddled with high costs of care on top of the trauma of having been
shot. Every year, there are more than 80,000 survivors of injuries
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firearms in the United States. Having a single-payer health care
system would not fix our epidemic of gun violence. But it would
certainly make it easier to bear.

Canada and Britain’s state-run systems of health care may be
imperfect, but they are a vast improvement on the
survival-of-the-fittest approach that the U.S. takes.

_This article was produced by __Economy for All_
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of the Independent Media Institute._

_Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is
the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali
[[link removed]],” a weekly television and radio
show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations._

* Medicare for All
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* For Profit Health Care
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* medical industry
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