"Single Payer Healthcare" As Essential Stimulus For American Business

 

Dear Ms. Conaboy,

Thanks for the good work you do with White Coat Notes. http://www.boston.com/Boston/whitecoatnotes/2012/03/clipboard-the-high-cost-american-health-care-snapshot/DLi2lw2Y8LmHSZprQS6nqN/index.html

Before addressing my immediate concern, I will state my biases. 

Throughout adulthood I have supported single payer healthcare.

Now, as I contemplate the Supreme Court's pending judgement on "Obamacare," I ask myself what will happen if "obligatory participation" is ruled unconstitutional. 

My growing frustration with The Party of Nope leaves me wondering if a Republican sweep in November might be the best way to demonstrate the non-viability of a deluded political movement that believes - and vows! - that any future tax hike is anathema. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/07/24/gop-antitax-dogma-endangers-the-country.html   ///  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/09/what-would-reagan-really-do.html

Uncompromising insistence that the nation can resolve its crises by "cuts alone" is properly categorized as budgetary anorexia.  

Any cutting frenzy --- a chest-thumping display of ideological bravado with no real world correlate --- would end by taking the knife to the nation's jugular.

Now that my biases are "on the table," here are my questions...

Would overturn of The Affordable Healthcare Act (whether judicially or legislatively accomplished) precipitate a crisis in American healthcare that would accelerate transition to single payer coverage? (If "Obamacare" goes under, I predict fighting in the streets - not immediately, but as soon as lost coverage, denied coverage, under-coverage and inability to purchase coverage become epidemic.)

In related vein, why is there no significant effort to represent "single payer" as "leveling the playing field" for American business? 

Absent the burden of astronomically expensive healthcare for employees and retirees, American companies would be much better suited for international competition. 

The heart of American Conservatism argues that removal of regulation (and relief from other undue imposition) would bring about an immediate upsurge in prosperity, making government revenues soar even if tax rates are lowered. 

Admittedly, humankind's ability to deny Reason is limitless. 

Even so, "framing" single payer healthcare as "bedrock relief for American business" would appeal to "both sides of the aisle," not to mention those tens of millions of Americans for whom the collapse of Obamacare would mark definitive end to affordable healthcare coverage. 

Yesterday, at lunch with a retired insurance executive, our "table" agreed that healthcare under-coverage (even for people who think their insurance is top notch) is getting so dire that "insurance companies will only offer policies that subscribers think will help them until they actually need them." http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/health/bankruptcy.medical.bills_1_medical-bills-bankruptcies-health-insurance?_s=PM:HEALTH

A recent New Yorker cartoon portrayed a clinic secretary counseling a new patient: “Unfortunately, your plan only covers doctors who couldn’t possibly help you anyhow.”

I recently spoke with my next door neighbor, a highly-regarded healthcare research executive at RTI: "For decades I was convinced we could reform American healthcare within the existing framework. Now I realize that any approach other than single payer just tinkers around the edges."

And finally...

If you are not familiar with the following chart, I recommend it as the single most incisive "glimpse" into the relationship between "unregulated healthcare cost" and shoddy "healthcare outcomes": http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html  Click to enlarge graphic.

Gratefully,

Alan Archibald

Hillsborough, North Carolina

PS Despite mounting urgency to deal with the nation's rapidly-approaching Healthcare Wall, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic conservative, has managed to make contraception a major issue. Against this backdrop, I encourage you to consider an article that would spotlight Santorum's fundamental contradiction of Vatican teaching. Following his long papal lineage, Pope Benedict XVI calls healthcare an "inalienable human right" and refers to government as the appropriate agency to insure universal coverage. Linking the Church's broader social teaching to the strictly delimited issue of abortion would provide crucially important context. As I often say to Fundamentalist and Evangelical friends, "Any text without a context is a pretext." Here is a well-written article that probes these matters - http://www.uscatholic.org/culture/social-justice/2011/01/papal-prescription