Samantha and I went to Green Hills last night to see Sicko, the latest documentary by filmmaker Michael Moore. Many of the people portrayed in the film sounded hauntingly familiar. I have friends and former coworkers who either could not afford or did not wish to pay for health insurance. Some have already seen the consequences of not having it, owing tens of thousands of dollars for only a few hours in the hospital.
There are several factors that I believe to be the root cause of this problem. I will agree with Moore's assertion that HMOs represent the "fox in the hen house" of the industry, where the denial of claims (particularly large ones) makes good business sense. There is no real oversight here, and the only recourse available is through the courts. Even if you are on the side of justice, their team of lawyers will devote a lot of time and money into poking holes through your argument. Your only hope is a settlement to keep quiet.
Most Americans do not trust our government to do anything, much less run a health care plan (Congress has a 25 percent approval rating; majority say they still prefer Democrats in control). Everyone on Capitol Hill owes some corporation or special interest group for their election. With the advent of a 24-hour news cycle and election coverage that begins only a few months after being sworn in, there is a limited time to actually focus on the issues at hand when they are already thinking about how it will look in the next race. Even then, any decision has to be weighed against the stance that the people they owe have on a particular issue. Not sure where they stand? An elected official gets calls, e-mails and visits to brief them on upcoming legislation that affects these groups. So when the time comes to swing by Washington between campaign stops to vote, you can bet your elected official will have their marching orders in their coat pocket.
We are great as a people at ignoring problems. World poverty? Next channel. Homeless on our city streets and even our suburban street corners? Lock the car doors and speed on through. Human trafficking that undercuts our wages while making board members and stockholders rich? Blame illegal immigrants. Pastor says gays and abortion rights activists are the work of Satan? Pipe bombs and lynch mobs. We live in a nation consumed by fear of attacks that seldom happen within our borders and downtrodden by our personal economic outlook, with job uncertainty and the dream of a comfortable retirement sounding more like a fairy-tale. We are constantly barraged with ads for quick-fix home equity and title loans, sending us deeper and deeper into debt.
In short, we are easily governed.
Is there evil afoot in our great nation? Not in the eyes of those in control. These men and women raise families and household pets like the rest of us. A walk through their house will not yield a dungeon or an Iron Maiden. They even attend church every Sunday like many of those around them. The "evil" comes from the view that a man or woman's place in life is somehow earned independent of anyone else. Making a quarter of a million dollars by investing in the health care industry is their God-given right. They are not the ones denying coverage, even though those gains would be almost completely erased if the HMO were to relax their Machiavellian standards. I do not believe that most Americans who fall into this group know the full consequences of where they put their money, or have somehow been convinced that it is really the fault of trial lawyers or some other group.
So if the deep "evil" is not in the investors that keep the system running (see what happens if their money were to disappear or have a sudden drop in stock price), where is it? Perhaps it rests with the men and women in charge of these companies that are required by law to maximize the wealth of the stockholders. In those cases, they feel at the mercy of the investors, who can be as fickle as the wind when it comes to putting up the capital. If the bottom line does not please this demigod, all benefits that flow from it will cease. We can simply lay the blame at the feet of the CEOs, but they are being rewarded for their work by the investors. America built this system on our ideas of capitalism without even a passing glance at the welfare of its people.
I do not identify a a fan of one economic system over another. In complete capitalism, government really serves no purpose other than to advance the agenda of those in the market (companies and investors). With communism, the government serves almost every purpose, with policy makers deciding everything from what goes onto your television, where you work and where you live. Socialism is the supposed happy medium in between, where only the basic needs of the people are in the hands of government. The rest is left to the open market. Those that wish to move towards complete capitalism will frequently allege that the government already has too much control and that we are beginning the downward spiral to communism. And we, the "easily governed," fall for it every time.
Health care is the Achilles heel of the ultra-capitalism argument for many, because we as carbon based life-forms are susceptible to injury and disease. When those costs mount, only those at the top of the socioeconomic food chain can afford the aid if their claims were to be denied. One illness can send a middle class American family into deep poverty, no matter how well they have saved for the future or how hard they have worked at their job. We live with this false sense of a safety net that was cut down many years ago. The argument fails quickly when there are fewer and fewer people actually "winning" under the system.
The idea of a middle class family is dying. You are either making it well or struggling in our day and age. Those who feel somewhat content live in fear of the next event around the corner. The cards are certainly not stacked in the favor of the vast majority of Americans making less than $100,000 a year.
I believe that repairing this broken system of politics and health care involves reducing the influence of money in both sectors. In politics, special interest groups (of all kinds, even those that in my opinion benefit society as a whole) should not be able to lay claim to a politician with campaign contributions. These groups should be presenting ideas, not a check. In health care, we must either remove the insurance companies and HMOs or prevent the denial of any claim, leaving sole discretion to the patient and doctor as to what care is necessary. Pharmaceutical companies should be more closely regulated in their interactions with doctors, instead of this open season on sending bag men around with free samples and invitations to luxury cruises and vacations if they agree to peddle their pills.
Our movie ticket should have come with a generic aspirin taped to the back.