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Published by MinnPost.com.
Mark Dayton
Our nation recently celebrated the 233rd anniversary of some of the most important words ever written: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Our country's greatness has been embedded in those founding principles, even as its deepest flaws have resided in their contradictions. It has required hard-fought political battles, a horrible Civil War, and hotly debated laws in order to extend those essential human rights to every American citizen.
While great progress has been made, too many violations of those founding principles continue to cause too many injustices. One such critical debate today is occurring over health care. Do all Americans have unalienable rights to good and affordable health care that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness require? It is very clear to me that all of us do. Yet some, tragically, would deny it. And too many others care most about making money to provide it.
It is not surprising that in a capitalist economy, the health care sector, which makes up 18 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product—more than $2.3 trillion—creates huge financial stakes in the gains and losses from any changes in the status quo.
Payment system is stretched
The financing of Americans' health care developed during past eras of more modest utilizations. There were limits on what even the best medicine could do to prolong life or enhance its quality. That also limited the costs and profits possible in the health care "industry."
As medical and scientific advances accelerated, more and more could be done to save and prolong lives and to enhance the quality of them. Those advances have made wonderful contributions to longer life expectancies, healthier lives and better treatment of diseases. However, they have stretched the old system of paying for people's health care beyond its breaking point. And Congress is showing once again how hard it is to "reform" that system to provide coverage for all Americans.
The hard truth is that health-care profiteering, led by the insurance and drug industries, makes expanding coverage to include everyone through the existing system almost cost-prohibitive. The administration's favored "required insurance" plan would unfortunately require taxpayers to pay for even more excessive profits by the insurance and pharmaceutical robber barons. It would also require the providers of health-care services, such as hospitals, to make drastic cuts that would worsen, not improve, the quality of many Americans' medical care.
Lobbying against 'public option'
While insurance and pharmaceutical companies cry crocodile tears in public over the exorbitant cost of America's health care, they lobby tenaciously behind the scenes in Washington to protect their lucrative domains. Currently, they have lined up most Republican members of Congress (and some Democrats) against the so-called "public option," which would create a public competitor to private health insurance. The private insurers are terrified that a not-for-profit alternative would expose their excessive profits in the plans they currently offer the American people.
Once again, the industry's friends in Congress are promising to prevent any real competition that would curtail profiteering and actually reduce their constituents' health insurance costs. Many of them voted a few years ago to give $10 billion a year in taxpayers' subsidies to private insurers to help them compete against Medicare. And, incredibly, they also voted to prohibit the federal government's Medicare administrators from negotiating lower prescription-drug prices, thus saddling senior citizens and taxpayers with billions of dollars in additional costs.
These hypocrites claim that the private sector is inherently more efficient than government. Yet, they use public policies and taxpayer subsidies to prevent genuine competition.
The public is ambivalent
Meanwhile, recent surveys show that Americans remain deeply ambivalent about the nation's health-care choices. On the one hand, they are deeply distressed that good health care for themselves and their families is ever more expensive and increasingly unaffordable. However, they are also worried by the health-care industry's threats that any real alternative, especially publicly funded universal health care, would be even worse than the status quo.
Thus, public opinion rests on a knife's edge, while policymakers in Washington wield the knife. The danger is that President Barack Obama's preference for the "required insurance" route, combined with Congress protecting the private insurance monopoly, will increase the financial burdens of health care for even more Americans and add to corporate profits at their expense.
Furthermore, opponents will call this costly compromise "government-run health care" and use it to try to poison public opinion against a national "single-payer" solution.
Care for all, at an optimal cost
With a single-payer system, in which government (meaning all of us) pays the costs of providing necessary health care to people but not unnecessary profits to corporations, we could provide health care for all Americans at an optimal cost.
Such a system could provide more, not fewer, options to patients. If there were shortages of doctors, or nurses, or hospitals, or senior-care services in certain regions, we could direct the resources to correct them. By spending 98 cents out every health-care dollar on people's needs, rather than corporate greed, we would know that we are providing everyone with the best health care we can collectively afford. And we would have fulfilled another crucial promise in the founding principles of this great nation.
Mark Dayton, a Democrat, is a former U.S. senator from Minnesota. He was commissioner of the Department of Energy and Economic Development during the Perpich administration and served as Minnesota's state auditor. He is a candidate for governor in 2010.
Copyright © 2009 MinnPost.com
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