So, it has been a little while since I last wrote anything of note. Let me first say that last night’s Democratic debates with moderates and progressives was frustrating to watch. Especially when it came to the healthcare portion. I found this particularly frustrating as I kept asking myself, “Why are we STILL debating this? We are the ONLY industrialized nation without universal healthcare!”
The moderates trotted out their tried and true, “But, we can’t make changes because we are afraid,” arguments. One excuse was that union workers would lose their union-negotiated healthcare packages because they chose to forego wage increases for keeping their healthcare. Under universal healthcare, unions could negotiate for higher wages without having to sacrifice healthcare. Were was this argument in rebuttal?
I mean, cars manufactured in Canada are drastically less expensive than those manufactured in the US because Canadians have universal healthcare. Last time I checked, people who make cars generally belong to unions. And unionized food service workers would be free to negotiate for higher wages, even tipped positions, because their employers would no longer have the high-cost overhead of healthcare. Everyone’s healthcare costs would go down because we’d all be paying into the same system and we’d be taking out the middlemen who currently stand between us and our healthcare decisions: for-profit insurance companies who’s main goal is to produce dividends for their shareholders.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I do understand that if there’s a buck to be made in this country, someone, somewhere is going to find a way to make a profit, that’s just the reality of unfettered capitalism. But, we are not living in an economic system of unfettered capitalism. We live in a partially socialized system with regulations on our form of capitalism. We realized that the robber barons of last century, of unfettered capitalism, was unsustainable. We realized that certain industries do need limitations imposed upon them to allow for smaller companies to provide competition for larger companies. We realized that Wall Street should not be allowed to run our economy unchecked. We realized that there were some basic human rights needed to be addressed by the government, with the costs of the programs that support these basic human rights being socialized.
Now, we are realizing that healthcare is a basic human right. As a basic human right, healthcare should not be for-profit. My grandmother told her children and my father told me that however you make your living, you should never profit off of suffering. That argument can be used in this context. Health insurance companies are profiting off of human suffering. This should never be acceptable in any society that wishes to call itself civilized.
I understand the fear of losing private healthcare is a scary concept for some. It was the same fear that surrounded the Affordable Care Act before it was passed. Now? Well, ask someone if s/he wants to go backward in time to before the Affordable Care Act. I doubt anyone wants to return to pre-existing conditions, caps on the amount of care one could receive, or not allowing their children to stay on the family’s policy until they are 26. And, nobody wants to go back to health insurance companies being able to sell coverage that didn’t really cover anything.
Then, there’s those who say that moving to universal healthcare would put millions in the healthcare insurance industry out of work. But, who is best trained to help the government do the work of providing healthcare to all of us? It is the current employees who already do that sort of work in the for-profit sector. Yes, insurance companies would have to adapt to a new market environment, but companies already need to be adaptable or go out of business. The question we really have to ask ourselves is, “What is more important? A health insurance company’s bottom line or the health of our fellow citizens?” Profits over people or people over profits? Without people, there are no profits.
So, those who say that moving to universal healthcare would undercut union-negotiated wage and benefits contracts are working to hard to justify the unjustifiable. Without the high costs of healthcare packages for union workers, union workers could argue for better pay, better working conditions and better retirement benefits. Universal healthcare actually strengthens unions’ negotiating position as employers would be stripped of the argument over the high cost of healthcare. That’s all I’m saying . . . what say you?