When Chemists Attack

A tale of two citizens

My grandmother was just diagnosed with a rare illness requiring medicine that costs $700 a month. Since this medicine is not covered by insurance – and since she and my grandfather already spend much of their income on medicine and health care – she was forced to go begging to the drug’s manufacturer for access to the medicine. It looks, so far, like the drug manufacturer is going to help her out. That’s not yet confirmed, though.

A few days ago, I read a news story about a twelve year old boy who died from – of all things – complications from an untreated toothache. The kid died because his family did not have access to proper dental care.

Twenty-first century America

When I was little, I remember hearing many things about what the twenty-first century would be like. Americans would drive to work in flying cars. We’d deal with cancer, the common cold, and hair loss with simple pills. Life would be great!

Well, this is America. This is the twenty-first century. I never really expected the flying cars to materialize. But I never, ever expected that in the America of the twenty-first century, our elderly would go begging to corporations for medicine and children would die from lack of basic medical care. I never dreamed of a twenty-first century America where 15.7 percent of Americans are uninsured and have limited or no access to basic care.

How did we come to this? We certainly seem to spend enough money on health care – more per capita than just about anyone else in the world. That includes, by the way, countries that provide medical care for all their citizens.

Fixing the health care system should be a priority in this country. The two stories above should not happen in America. I can’t be the only one who finds the state of health care in this country to be a moral outrage. This is America, and we’re supposed to be better than that!

The Red vs. the Blue

Health care in this country is an important issue to me, and I hope that it’ll be an important issue the next time presidential elections come around. With that in mind, I decided to check out the campaign web sites of several presidential hopefuls to see where they stand.

Here are the Republican hopefuls:

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani’s campaign website doesn’t say much about health care. It doesn’t say much about any other issues, either. If you want to know his position, you will probably have to go elsewhere.

Giuliani does mention (look at the very bottom of the page) that he was involved in a program called HealthStat, aimed at "identifying unenrolled children eligible for health insurance".

Mitt Romney

Romney has a page dedicated to health care. He tell us

The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.

I’m having real trouble translating this as anything other than "Shut up and take what scraps the market throws you". Just what sort of market reforms are we talking about here? Would it be too cynical of me to assume he means a tax cut of some kind, like Bush proposed in his recent State of the Union address?

It’s a conservative idea, insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care. I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.

Maybe this is a silly question, but who is going to pay for insurance for everyone? Or is Romney redefining "everyone" as "everyone who can afford health insurance"?

(If Romney was advocating some sort of single-payer system, his last sentence might make some sense. We pay a lot to middlemen – insurance companies – now. If we got that money back, we might end up with more money in our pockets even if our taxes were nominally higher. But I don’t think that’s where Romney is heading. After all, Romney’s made it clear that he’s not interested in any kind of government involvement.)

John McCain

McCain doesn’t have a page on his site dedicated to health care. He does have a page on Human Dignity & the Sanctity of Life – which would seem related. Alas, it’s only McCain’s position on abortion, gay marriage, stem cells, and the evils of the internet. I did find one interesting quote:

The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion.

This isn’t very encouraging, unless these armies of compassion are in the business of providing health care for these children once they’re out of the womb. They didn’t do squat for that kid who died from a toothache.

On to the Democrats:

Hillary Clinton

Clinton’s got a press release up that tells us

Passage of a universal health coverage plan will be one of my top priorities as President. It is time for bold yet practical solutions and I will use today’s encouraging news to continue my efforts to build support for universal health care.

Clinton’s heart looks like it’s in the right place. She recognizes that the system is broken, and that universal care is something we need. But she’s not filling in any details at this point.

(I can’t say I blame her for lack of detail right now.)

Barack Obama

Like Clinton, Obama has called for universal health care. He also has a page on health care on his site.

The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet more than 46 million Americans have no health insurance. Too many hard-working Americans cannot afford their medical bills, and health-related issues are the number one cause for personal bankruptcy. Promoting affordable, accessible, and high-quality health care is a priority for Senator Obama, who is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Also like Clinton, his page doesn’t go into any specifics on how he plans to provide universal care. The rest of the page dwells on side issues (lead paint, information technology, hospital report cards, etc.). I’d love to see some details on what he plans to do.

John Edwards

Like the other Democrats, Edwards favors of universal health care. Unlike the other Democrats, he’s given us a few of the details on his plan.

Edwards proposes to first require employers to either provide health insurance or partially pay for it, create “Health Markets” to help insured folks have more bargaining power, and to eventually require everyone to buy health insurance. The poor would be covered under an expanded Medicare.

I’m not sure whether the Edwards plan would work, but he’s at least given us something to talk about. For instance, doesn’t the need for people to purchase different insurance plans add unnecessary layers (and costs) to the process of getting health care? I see our system of many providers of health insurance – each with their own policies and paperwork – as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Also, it’s in a for-profit insurer’s interests to take as much money and pay for as little care as possible. (My current insurer excels at this.)

I also don’t care for the association of health care with employment. Why should a pottery shop, for instance, have to worry about dealing with health care? What happens to my care if I want to, say, change careers and start a small business? Wouldn’t our businesses be more competitive if they didn’t have to worry about providing health care themselves?

Perhaps, though, the Edwards system is meant as a transition from the gigantic mess we have now to a system that at minimum guarantees access to care for all Americans. That’d definitely be a step in the right direction.

Summing up

It looks like the major Republicans are (at best) indifferent to universal health care. This might be my cynical side speaking again, but I think the Republicans are more interested in cutting taxes than anything else. Health care just isn’t on their radar – unless it’s used as a lever for more tax cuts.

The major Democrats acknowledge that there’s a real issue with health care, but aren’t as yet providing much information on how they intend to solve it (John Edwards excepted). But it’s early. Perhaps as the campaign goes on, we’ll get more details on the Democratic plans. And maybe the Republicans will propose something more meaty than tax cuts.

If any of you readers have some more information on any of these candidates’ positions on health care and their plans to fix it, leave me some links. I’d be interested in reading them! (The same goes for positions from candidates that aren’t as well-known as the ones I’ve mentioned. I’d be interested in reading what they think, too!)