Iraq War Costs Americans in Health Care Tradeoff

[babylonsister]

Iraq War Costs Americans in Health Care Tradeoff
by John Young

“People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” — George W. Bush


That’s right, Mr. President. And thanks for pointing out what’s wrong with a status quo you’ve done almost nothing to alter. Welcome to the ER. It is America’s answer to a phony debate. Health care: Is it a right? Of course it is.

Were it not, ERs would bar their doors to the uninsured. People would expire on the curb. Bodies would bloat in the streets.

They don’t. Because without saying as much, we know that health care is not your business or my business, it’s our business. Like education. Like highways. Like waterways.

Unfortunately in our consumerist society, consumerist appeals win the day when policy is made (”Defend freedom — go shopping”). We treat health care like we might pastry or perfume. ‘Twould be nice that everyone had either, but …

But, to reiterate what Bush says: Everyone has health access, in the ER. Just be prepared as a society to pay emergency-room costs. Imagine instead more people seeing doctors in advance of cataclysm, more children healthy and in school more days.

The other day I was stunned by the vitriol in a critique of Congress and Bush regarding health care. What was stunning was that it came from William W. Hinchey, president of the Texas Medical Association.

For half a century this nation’s medical establishment has been reliably and comfortably pro-status quo.

Hinchey writes that his “Irish blood is boiling” as federal budget pressures cause more and more physicians to deny treatment to Medicare recipients. This relates to a freeze on Medicare reimbursement rates going back to 2001.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/28/7358/