Health care in America is un-American

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8382

Health care in America is un-American
by Weldon Berger | Jun 28 2007


People in countries with universal health care live longer and healthier lives than people in the United States. Their infant mortality rates are lower. No one goes bankrupt or loses their home because of unpaid medical bills. No one has to make a choice between food and medicine or between rent and health insurance payments. No one has to put off going to the doctor because it's too expensive. Changing jobs doesn't mean losing or changing medical coverage. Losing a job doesn't mean losing medical coverage.

Universal health care even mitigates the costs of malpractice insurance: a big chunk of many malpractice awards goes toward future medical costs, and with universal health care, those costs are already covered.

So what's the down side? Opponents of universal health care will tell you about waiting lists and inferior medical services. They'll bring up the spectre of "socialised medicine," which is meant to make you think of some faceless Soviet-style bureaucrat ordering you to see some poorly-trained doctor in some bleak clinic.

They'll tell you that the "free market," the system under which profits depend in part on withholding medical services from participants or refusing participation to people with the greatest needs, is the best way to ensure that everyone gets the care they need.

They'll tell you this with a straight face, in the face of 50 million uninsured Americans, in the face of life expectancies three years shorter than those in other developed countries (and Cuba), in the face of infant mortality rates anywhere from 20-50% higher than those in other developed countries.

They'll tell you that the U.S. has the finest health care system in the world; something which, if true, would mean that Americans are simply physically inferior to those longer-lived and healthier Canadians and French and Cubans.

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