Common objections to universal single payer health care and some snappy comebacks

eridani

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Mon Jan-19-09 03:59 AM
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Common objections to universal single payer health care and some snappy comebacks

Objection #1

Why should I pay for health care for lazy slobs who never exercise, smoke and eat junk food?

Why should I pay for dental care for snot-nosed kids who drink soda pop all day and whose mothers don�t teach them to brush their teeth?

Snappy comebacks #1

Why should the fire department answer calls from people who let their kids play with matches, have wiring that isn�t up to code, or store dirty rags in their basements?

In early 2007, lack of $80 for extraction of an infected tooth killed a child when the infection spread to his brain. The subsequent unsuccessful attempt to save his life cost $250,000!

Underlying issue for #1

People raise the question of �undeserving� people getting health care because they resent paying for the health care of the elderly, the poor, and public employees when so many of them have limited access to health care themselves.

Why should they tolerate this? The answer is that they shouldn�t. The money that they are paying could and should be used for universal single payer health care that covers everybody�no exceptions.

Objection #2

This is a capitalist country. I don�t want socialized medicine.

The government screws up everything it touches.

Snappy comebacks #2

When did you start thinking that Taiwan wasn�t a capitalist country? They have single payer health care.

Capitalism doesn�t work very well without extensive investment in public goods. Like roads and schools, health care is infrastructure.

The US government successfully financed the Interstate Highway System, the Apollo moon landing, the Internet, the aviation industry and the computer industry.

Health care will mostly be privately delivered, as it is now. The only thing that will change is the funding mechanism.

#2�Why infrastructure needs to be public

One word�Enron

As Enron and Reliant have demonstrated, maximizing profit in the energy industry amounts to large-scale theft. They found that they could make more money by withholding power than by supplying it, so that's what they did, just as insurance companies make more money by denying care than by providing it.

Note that publicly owned utilities in California didn't have any brownouts during the manufactured 'crisis'. Having private health insurance is like hiring someone to tap into your power line between the meter and your house and siphon off as much as they can get by with.

Objection #3

Universal health care means rationing. I don�t want to die while I�m waiting in line.

Snappy comebacks #3

Under the current system, without money you die because you aren�t allowed into the line in the first place.

For those who aren�t old or poor enough, and who aren�t public employees, a very common way to cut into the line is to deliberately commit a crime. This does not happen in any other developed country.

Objection #4

What are you going to do with all the surplus people in the insurance industry? (This is a serious potential problem that we can�t just blow off.)

Snappy comebacks #4

By sheerest coincidence, we are now looking at a very serious shortage of nurses. Retraining a work force that we now pay to tell people �That isn�t covered� to provide actual care is a non-trivial problem, but it�s where we have to go, and better sooner than later.

If the financing of health care is a public good, then public oversight can insure that the claims processing jobs that remain will never be sent out of the country. This is true whether we hire existing insurance companies to do this work or build a separate institutional structure from scratch.

Objection #5

But people are currently satisfied with their health insurance, and an overwhelming majority are satisfied with the cost of their health care.

Snappy comebacks #5

Why in heaven�s name should anyone be surprised by the fact that the 50% of the population that has NO HEALTH CARE EXPENSES AT ALL in any given year are absolutely delighted to be paying nothing for health care?

Unless you�ve been expensively sick, you don�t really know if your health insurance is any good, just as you don�t know if your local fire department is really any good until you have a fire. And if you�re really lucky, you�ll never have to find out.

Objection #6

What we really need is a public/private partnership.

Snappy comebacks #6

What kind of public/private partnership are you talking about?

The kind we have now is that public money is used to take care of sick people, and private insurers take money from healthy people and keep as much of it as they can.

The kind we need is what single payer advocates propose�public funding with (mostly) private delivery.

Objection #7

What do you people have against profits, anyway?

Snappy comebacks #7

Nothing, provided that they go to people who provide actual care and necessary manufactured materials.

Insurance companies freely admit that if the risk pool were to be the entire population, including the sickest, that they can�t make profits. That�s why they insist that they be exempt from insuring the sickest, whose care is then paid for by the government.

If you want health care for everyone, profit-taking should be flat out forbidden to those who admit that they don�t want to spread the risk to everyone.

Objection #8

I don�t want some government bureaucrat choosing my doctor for me.

Snappy comebacks #8

All single payer proposals allow free choice of medical providers, which the private insurance available to most people does not allow. Enough with fragmented provider lists that force you to change doctors every time your circumstances change!

The only �choice� that private insurance offers you is which 50 pages of gobbledegook you want to wade through in order to figure out how they are going to try to avoid paying claims.

The government will just pay the bills with much less administrative hassle and expense, for any provider that you choose.