The Northwestern
February 22, 2007
I was having lunch a few years ago with a long-time friend. He had worked many years for a small company in Oshkosh. That day he had some momentous news. He had been laid off. We talked about what employment options he had at the age of 54, but the most immediate concern was his health. My friend suffers from diabetes. He would get COBRA coverage for a while, but after that he absolutely had to have a job with health insurance. No way could he afford to buy the medications he needed on his own, and with his pre-condition he was uninsurable. He needed to find a job with a group plan, and at 54 that wasn’t going to be easy. I looked across the table and asked what he was planning to do if he couldn’t find a job with health benefits. His eyes caught mine as he said dryly, “Die, I guess.”
Today some companies no longer offer health benefits. A neighbor came down with the Norwalk virus and was forced to take vacation days. Others companies play hardball. A brother of a friend came down with a debilitating, incurable illness and was informed by his Oshkosh employer that he had to return to work within six months or lose his job and his health insurance.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about restructuring health care in America. Several states, most 2008 presidential candidates, even Bush have offered new plans. They are all flawed because they all include for-profit, private insurance companies as part of the solution. For-profit companies maximize profits by recruiting low-risk people and eliminating high-risk people from their coverage. They eliminate more effective, but more expensive medications from their formulary. They eliminate better, but more expensive doctors and hospitals from their preferred providers list. But mostly they support a bloated corporate bureaucracy where CEOs get $40-50 million annual salaries. That’s $40-50 million that you and your employer pay into the health care system that buys not one pill, not one doctor’s visit, not one vaccination, just CEOs who say you can’t have the care you need because they and their major stockholders need bigger houses, fancier cars, better pools. For-profit, private health insurance companies can’t be part of any solution to our health care crisis, because they are the problem.
One possible solution to the problem is government sponsored, universal health care. No government official I know of makes $40 million a year. But whenever government health care is suggested, highly paid, right-wing propagandists bring up Canada. They offer us a fool’s choice, either the mess we have, or Canada. Most counties with national health insurance, even Canada, have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates, and spend thousands of dollars less per person than the USA. Where does the dollar difference go? Into those obscene CEO salaries and profits for wealthy stockholders.
One way to make health care available to all Americans would be to make it a benefit of the Social Security Insurance program. The infrastructure is already in place. It could be funded by removing the $90,000 cap on taxable income, and by increasing the SSI “payroll tax.” Further savings would come from eliminating Medicare and Medicaid, and by wringing the profit out of our current health care system. We should be able to match the cost of other nations, but even if ours costs $1000 more, we would still be paying less than we are now. And everyone would be insured, even our hard working friends who have been laid off, or work without benefits.
Northwestern Community Columnist John Lemberger is a fifth generation Oshkosh resident. His great-great grandparents, John and Francesca Lemberger, arrived in Oshkosh from a part of Austria that was once Bohemia, in 1888. He has a Ph.D. in science education and has been an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Services with UWO since 1995.
