Life and Freedom are moral issues. It is time for Democrats to talk about health in those terms, beyond just policy terms like health insurance reform, bending the cost curve, types of exchanges, etc.
Health means life. If you get a major illness or injury and cannot get it treated adequately, you could die. And tens of thousands do.
Health means freedom. If you have a serious illness or injury and cannot get it treated, your freedom will be limited in many ways. Your physical freedom: you may no longer have the freedom to move around. Your economic freedom: you may not be able to work or your medical bills may impoverish you. Your emotional freedom: you will not be free to live a happy life.
Health is therefore a moral issue of the highest order. And it is a patriotic issue. Health security is a problem for far more Americans than military security. Your security is far more likely to be threatened by the lack of treatment for illness and injury than by any likely terrorist attack.
Real terror is seen in the thousands of letters sent to the White House and Congress by people whose lives have been shattered or threatened by the behavior of the health insurance corporations. Wellpoint, which made $2.7 billion in fourth quarter profits in 2009, tried to raise its Anthem/Blue Cross premiums 39% in California. Wellpoint made its profits by NOT giving health care. It treated 2.2million fewer people. It found a way NOT to treat people who needed treatment, either by refusing to insure them, or dropping them as clients, or denying authorizations. If you are sick or injured and that happens to you, you face terror — very real terror.
That’s when “health maintenance organizations” (HMOs) become health terror organizations.
The Obama administration has been missing the moral arguments in the health care debate, while conservatives always hit their moral targets. Where the conservatives argue loss of freedom (“government takeover”) and life (“death panels” and abortion), the administration has been giving policy wonk arguments about economic and pragmatic policy details that the public cannot understand: health exchanges, percentages of the poverty line (133% vs. 150%), and so on. They are real enough. But they do not communicate the moral issues.
Morality and Policy
Why should Congress move to reconciliation? Because it is moral. It is the right thing to do, because it will enhance life and freedom.
Why should the public option be in the reconciliation bill? Because it is right and practical: it allows the market to police the insurance companies — to keep their greed from overwhelming the life and freedom of tens of millions of Americans. And a public plan— an American Plan!— gives you an your doctor much more freedom to determine your treatment, with no profit incentives for insurance companies to deny you care.
Why should national exchanges, not state exchanges, be in the reconciliation bill? Because they provides greater economic freedom — through bigger pools, which means much more affordable insurance for all. Affordability means economic freedom!
Why cover folks up to 150%, not just 133%, of the poverty line. To offer life and freedom to many more of our fellow Americans.
Why should anti-trust exemptions be ended for health insurance companies? Economic freedom! Anti-trust exemptions function like corporate bailouts. They transfer the money from ordinary people into corporate coffers. By reducing or eliminating competition, corporations can charge more for less treatment to fewer people. Those extra charges, plus out of pocket costs when we are denied care under the plans, come out of our pockets. Anti-trust exemptions take money out our pockets and put it into corporate profits. They threaten our economic freedom.
And how should we be thinking about the passage of a health plan that makes progress but falls short of what is needed? We should be taking it as a national commitment — a moral commitment — to health for Americans. It is a commitment to doing what is right, to life, freedom, and health security, a first step of many steps to come.
It is time to return to the moral fundamentals. Health security is deeply patriotic — perhaps our most important form of security. Health means life. Health means freedom. Everyone can understand that.
“It is time to return to the moral fundamentals. Health security is deeply patriotic — perhaps our most important form of security. Health means life. Health means freedom. Everyone can understand that.”
Excellent. Unfortunately, a good number of people don’t seem to “understand,” people stuck in perpetual campaign mode, who maybe don’t even realize the differences between campaigning and governing. Or perhaps simply don’t care.
As a nation, we treat health care as a product. The moral implications of that are staggering, and for the millions without health care insurance, the practical consequences are equally as bad.
what are you gonna do? if we allow health care to exist as a for-profit industry, we have no moral legs to stand on… the most moral reconciliation of issues is to reestablish the health care industry as strictly a U.S. non-profit enterprise…that way we keep the ‘merican ”way” of life, health, liberty and pursuit of happiness a little more part of the freedoms we believe are inalienably ‘free’…and ‘merican…and still allow for competition–if that’s so damn important.
I have the privelege of working with hundreds of passionate advocates(most of them cancer survivors) who have been making this same point to their elected officials for years.
They can’t quit on winning real health care reform– the present system absolutely denies them their right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Any American could wake up in their shoes tomorrow and be denied adequate coverage just because they heard those chilling words, “you have cancer.”
Stopping the fight now is not an option–onward to victory!!
just a duck “what are you gonna do? if we allow health care to exist as a for-profit industry, we have no moral legs to stand on”
Agreed. And we can’t even get anything remotely close to changing the for-profit reality. I have no idea what we can “do.”
Bravo!
Pete, thanks for your comment, and for your work with advocates. I do agree, that we can’t stop fighting, on a moral basis and practical basis. I’ve been without health insurance for more years than I can to remember, and even for the years I had it, the things they wouldn’t cover made nothing but a catastrophic policy possible. Finally even that was no longer an option. It’s encouraging to hear from folks like you
I have a theory that the insurance companies will eventually go bust. Case in point, my family has recently dropped health coverage because we simply could not afford to have both catastrophic coverage AND real health care. We have taken the plunge into the pool of the uninsured and are betting on ourselves by taking good care of our health. (I have to admit, I have my fingers crossed.) I think that more and more people are intelligently getting out of the insurance game and its never-ending, ridiculously increasing premiums. As a result, the few who are left playing the game will have to pay more and sooner or later they won’t be able to afford it. The insurance companies will fall, things will shuffle fast and who knows?! My crystal ball doesn’t see it all. I just know I am taking my vitamins religiously.