Editorial: Socialized bogeyman
Government has real role in providing health care solutions for residents
Sacramento Bee
10-SEP-06
Careful, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Your ghostwriter seems to have just made you an opponent of Medicare.
The opinion piece in question was designed to detail your reasons for vetoing Senate Bill 840 by Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. SB 840 would have revolutionized the state’s health care system. Private insurers would have gone out of business. The state would have started paying directly for the health care of millions of Californians.
“I cannot support a government-run health care system,” you wrote (or, more accurately, someone wrote for you).
Hmm. So what exactly is Medicare? Or, more important, what are Republicans and Democrats really fighting about when it comes to providing affordable health care to more Californians, and how can anyone find the elusive political compromise?
SB 840 sought to create one payer of health care _ the state _ for residents of California. That would be the so-called “single-payer”
solution to our health care ills. The very term “single payer” tends to create political divides. And along those divides, the very real role of government in health care gets misunderstood.
“Socialized medicine is not the solution to our state’s health care problems,” wrote Schwarzenegger in vetoing SB 840. Actually, socialized medicine is as American as apple pie. No greater example is Medicare.
Medicare is essentially a single-payer form of health care. One payer _ the federal government _ provides the bulk of the funds to hospitals and doctors for the necessary care of millions of senior citizens.
Yes, those over the age of 65 pay part of the cost. Some can join HMOs as an alternative. But the federal government “runs” Medicare. And it also “runs” Medicaid (known as Medi-Cal in California), the single-payer program that underwrites care to the poor and disabled.
The political mainstream isn’t clamoring to get rid of those established forms of socialized U.S. medicine. So why do hard philosophical viewpoints suddenly emerge when the same solution is discussed for working Americans and their children?
Our problem with SB 840 was how the Democrats dangled it as veto bait from the get-go. No quest for common ground ever appeared evident, either by Democrats or Schwarzenegger. It was all about Democrats embracing government as the solution and Republicans denouncing it. In vetoing SB 840, Schwarzenegger followed the script.
Real progress in lowering health care costs and insuring more Californians will take a far more serious effort than the theater surrounding SB 840. It will start with the recognition that government is not the bad guy, and that government has an indispensable role in any solution.