Editorial
The Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY)
Friday, October 24, 2008
Americans will survive a protracted economic downturn if they have to forgo luxuries like daily lattes at Starbucks or new flat-screen TVs. But many will not make it if they continue to skimp on health care, as a story in last Friday’s Gazette indicated they’ve been doing. Stories like that — another one appeared on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times — make the best argument yet for the government to provide universal health insurance. Left to their own devices and dwindling resources, too many Americans can’t or won’t buy it themselves.
The story contained numerous anecdotes of people who had declined or delayed trips to the doctor, stopped or cut back on prescribed medication, etc. due to money issues. In one, a woman ignored a lump on her breast that, when she finally went to the hospital complaining of back pain, proved to be cancer.
According to a survey by the Rockefeller Foundation and Time magazine released this summer, the number of Americans who skipped a visit to a doctor because of cost rose from 18 percent to 25 percent in just the last year. Obviously, that number is likely to rise further as the recession worsens. And while some people may “get away with it,” others who have more serious ailments will get sicker. The eventual cost of curing them will be much higher and, more likely than not, will be borne by the public.
It would be much more humane, as well as cost-effective, to get these ailments fixed before they become serious or even terminal. But without a program that provides comprehensive coverage at little or no cost, millions of Americans will continue to play Russian roulette. What’s needed is a single-payer system, a la Medicare, that covers everyone equally. The government may not be the most efficient administrator when it comes to such programs, but it’s hard to imagine anything worse than the current system, with hundreds of middle men (HMOs, private insurers, etc.) each with their own costly bureaucracies.