The EXEGETIST: A Library Of Independent Political Thought. By: Jack H. Dawsey

Health Care Reform

By: Jack Dawsey

With respect to the recent passing of the Health Care Reform Bill, I offer this opinion to the reader. 

First, in American history, when did life expectancy start its upward climb the most?  Was it in the late 19^th century, when anesthesia was discovered -making surgery easier?  Or, was it in the 20^th century, when medicines became more available?  Or, in your opinion, was it in this 21^st century, when CAT scans, and Nuclear Medicine, and MRI’s proliferated? 

Experts believe the answer is “all of the above” with a caveat.  The caveat is access, having access to the basics of health care.

Obviously, statistics aren’t always reliable.  As they say, “Liars figure, and figures lie…” but it’s a good bet that life expectancy started its uptick in America shortly after WW-II.  Ironically, American life expectancy appears to have gained its largest increase as thousands of young Americans soldiers were being killed in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Part of the answer may be attributed to America’s war mobilization.  Americans discovered better access to medical care through the military, or in jobs linked to the military industrial complex, and companies having contracts with the military, and through the outgrowth of programs developed from the New Deal of the 1940’s.  It’s been said that good health care is less about technologies than about having access to it.

For all the disagreements about Obama Care, (and there are flaws in the new Health Care Reform Bill as with all bills coming out of Congress), it’s imperative to focus on the component: access. 

America’s history reveals that Americans have seen a steady increase to “access” to health care.  Sadly, a reversal of that trend has occurred since about the 1990’s.

I recently read a report that sited one-quarter of Californians have no health insurance coverage, period.  Relatively speaking, that report could as easily apply to North Carolina, or any other state. Despite the efforts of both, Republican and Democrat Presidents, the political failures in our nation to enact universal health care are abominable.  And frankly, today, for Republicans to walk “lock step” against the current health care package, (more modest than their patron saint Richard Nixon proposed in the 1970’s), is disgusting.  Moreover, for Republicans to demagogue the health care issue with threats of court action, or their so-call “repeal” campaign slogan; that, by the way is a false choice, is appalling to this writer.

If these modern-day re’ pub’ a thug-radicals had their way with respect to health care, the number of uninsured Americans would rise exponentially.

By the way, don’t you think with respect to having compassion, particularly for the poor and disenfranchised, that a true republican rises to manhood or womanhood and breaks the band of fear and cynicism that binds their party, today?

Who among us who would deny a suffering neighbor access to medical services? That’s precisely what we do when we look away, or “wink” at the uninsured in need of America’s medical system.  Whatever happened to America’s moral compass and character?

Opponents of this editorial claim that “all” Americans have access to health care.  According to them, a visit to the local hospital emergency room is all that’s required.  But that’s not entirely true.  First, not all of rural America, (and that’s most of this huge nation), have access to hospitals.  But moreover, why should an uninsured mother of a sick child sit for hour(s) and hour(s) in an emergency room -waiting for services?  And when services are finally rendered, the enormous extra cost of that service is ultimately passed on to YOU, either in annual health premium increases, or in the daily cost of doing business for the hospital?  Isn’t it a matter of being penny wise and pound foolish?

I recently read a report that our children are two-and-a-half times as likely to die before the age of 5 as children in Sweden, and that American women are 11 times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as Irish women.  While I can’t confirm the actual statistics of that report, it seems to me that if the stats are ½ the number it should concern us.    

I concur that the new Health Care Reform Bill will not solve “all” the issues of health care.  But, it’s a start. 

Did you know that Social Security and Medicare required years of amendments to improve?  Would you like to follow today’s foolish republicans and “repeal” those programs?  Besides, if you’re one of the 40-million without medical access, the Health Care Reform Bill is a game-changer.

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