I walked several blocks from the hospital at lunch time the other day. A basement storefront sign at a hair dresser’s read “walk-ins welcome.” Impulsively I went in.
The young woman made pleasant small talk. I am a clod when it comes to small talk.
I said that yes, the weather seemed suddenly hot instead of cold and rainy. But what was really on my mind was how real health care reform would come to the United States.
“Health care. Oh my god. What is wrong with this country?” she started.
The young woman’s many points precipitated in an expository flurry:
“I thought that maybe with Obama it would be the great change and at last it would happen. But it doesn’t look that way, does it?” she said.
“Do you know that we here pay $600 a month for insurance?” she confided. “600 a month! And it doesn’t have dental. It doesn’t cover the eye doctor. Mental health – maybe 2, 3 visits maximum, no more. And the co-pays! Then the doctor says you need a test – but they deny it! How can an insurance company make the diagnosis or prescribe the treatment?”
She said she was shocked that some friends’ opposed any kind of health reform.
“My friends said, ‘Oh I like my insurance. I don’t want to lose that.'” She rolled her eyes. “So I asked them, ‘what about your insurance do you like? Paying the premium? Is it the co-pays? Or maybe that you have to pay cash to see a dentist? Do you like asking permission to see a specialist or get a test?'”
“‘Ok,’ my friends said, “we hate our insurance company. But we don’t want to pay for someone else to have health care.”
“Oh my god!” her story continued, “We are talking about health care. God forbid something really bad should happen! Everyone should have health care! I mean, in this country they have the idea that health care is a privilege. That some people don’t deserve it? C’mon! No one really believes that. No one. You can go to Europe. France or Italy or England or any country in Europe. If you get sick they will take care of you. They will help you. If I get sick, god forbid, that’s what I will do: Go back home.”
She explained that she paid $600 per month but that was not her real insurance policy. Her real insurance policy was that she could return to Europe if she became seriously ill.
“They will take care of me there, without question. It will not be about the money. What is wrong with this country?”
When the G-20 meet in Pittsburgh this month there will be only one nation represented in which millions of people suffer bankruptcy due to medical debt, only one nation in which health care is deemed a privilege instead of a right, only one nation where more than one sixth of the population lacks access care: the United States of America. The U.S. also sits dead last, 20th out of the G-20, on major health indicators while spending money than all the rest, per person per year, on medical care.
What is wrong with this country?
Single-payer national health insurance is the very least we can do to improve health care in the United States. It will liberate hundreds of billions of dollars now wasted in the private insurance industry, for the good of our health. Everybody in, nobody out.