I began my three-part series on health care two weeks ago, and now here I am on my final installment, and I have a confession: I misled you. In last week’s column I claimed that Canadians don’t have to pay for their eyeglasses. In fact, the Canadian government covers all major health care costs, but spectacles are not included.
I was not aware of this when I wrote it. And in my defense, few Canadians pay for their glasses since employers often provide private insurance which covers little things like eyewear.
This is just to say that I don’t want to become one of those people who invents facts to strengthen their argument because I don’t think my argument needs the help.
But then again, this is no forensics club debate. This is real politics. That means someone stands to lose money, namely the health care industry and the people they pay off.
And when the privileged stand to lose money, they don’t play fair. “May the best side win” comes down to, one, which side convinces the most people and, two, which side has the most influence over the lawmakers.
The verdict is already in on who has the most influence over the lawmakers, and unfortunately it is not the American public.
The industry has lately put quite a few dollar bills in their handshakes, so to speak, and one of their lucky beneficiaries is Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), whose own hands are all over proposed reform legislation. Even before Obama became president, Baucus initiated a push for health care reform, which sounds perfectly nice, except I suspect that he’s up to no good. My case against him is based on two things.
Exhibit A: Sen. Baucus has received, according to a July 20 Washington Post article, about $3 million from the “health and insurance sectors” from 2003 to 2008.
Exhibit B: The bill that he has proposed does little to curb the power of the health care industry or insure that all Americans are covered. Worse, it abandons the “public option,” which two-thirds (65 percent) of the country happens to support, according to a Sept. 24 New York Times/CBS News poll.
The public option, which is included in several other proposed bills, would be for those who do not have their own private insurance. Resembling Medicare, the option would be funded by the government and would be only one of several options for the uninsured.
A solid majority of Americans support this option, and yet Congress is full of sighs and indecision. Why? Maybe the millions of dollars flowing in from the industry has somehow confused them.
OK, so the industry exerts more power over our government than we do. Nothing new here. But that’s only half of the battle. Insurance companies can’t go to the polls and can’t change the way we vote! The only ones who have control over the way we vote are … the media.
Unfortunately, the media, like the health care industry, are playing dirty.
I present to you my analysis of a June 24 Fox News article titled, “As Obama Pushes for National Health Care, Most Americans Happy With Coverage.” The subtitle says, “… studies show that most Americans are overwhelmingly happy with their own health care — including most of the 46 million Americans without insurance.” No, this is not The Onion, this is real news. Right?
More like yellow journalism. The article fails to say just what the survey (by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006) asked the participants. It only reports that “89 percent of Americans were satisfied with their own personal medical care, but only 44 percent were satisfied with the overall quality of the American medical system.” This is misleading because it suggests that Americans don’t know that they are really happy, when, in fact, the data probably means that people like their doctors and the fact that their employers pay for most of their insurance, but they may still hate paying companies to give them a hard time, don’t like seeing 46 million Americans uninsured and know there is a better way to run things.
Of course, it’s all ambiguous. Maybe the industry is right, or maybe the majority of the American populace and the rest of the world — maybe we’re the ones who are on to something. Who’s telling the truth? Can we trust anybody with a profit motive? Can we tolerate insurance companies whose profiteering and bureaucracy we would fare better without?
These are things we need to figure out quickly, because we can’t suffer another defeat from the industry that has kept us behind the rest of the world for a few too many decades.
— Amien Essif is a junior in English literature. He can be reached at [email protected].
