Socialized healthcare: would it work here?
Program would further equality
Tim Boyd staff writer
For a country that bases its ethos on the slogan "all men (and women) are created equal," the United States is often very reluctant to follow this through with an egalitarian social policy. In education, for example, it would take a total suspension of disbelief to argue that a child born into the Detroit public school system has been given an "equal" chance of success compared to one born in Orange County. Yet, there is little enthusiasm for any measures that would mandate equalization of funding and resources per pupil across the nation.
Likewise with healthcare, being "created equal" does not mean having access to the same level of medical care and attention regardless of income level or place of birth. Those equal rights that are loudly proclaimed -- the right to vote, the right to free speech, the right to bear arms -- are, in general, free of charge to the rest of the population. As soon as we turn to a matter like healthcare, however, the idea of "equality" changes to the belief that everyone has an equal right to pay for it, provided they have the money.
And yet, the result of such a system is painfully predictable: a system of exceptionally high-quality healthcare for those who can afford good insurance plans and a hopelessly inadequate and expensive one for those who can't. Healthcare should be a basic right. If you need treatment for cancer, you should not have to risk a dramatically lower chance of survival because you happen to be poor. If a child requires urgent medical treatment, it should not add an additional financial burden to a family who already cannot afford decent health insurance.
The only way to provide such equal access is for the state to intervene pro-actively in the provision of healthcare. This could mean a fully state-operated system as in Great Britain, or state-regulated insurance programs as in Germany and France (France, incidentally, has the best healthcare system in the world according to the World Health Organization, and it is based on universal coverage).
The idea of a nationalized system is not that people with more money will not be able to purchase additional healthcare from private suppliers. However, it is based on the idea that there should be a substantial level of medical coverage available to every citizen -- and that coverage should not be contingent on their income. This can only be achieved by state intervention.
A state-provided health system is not "free." In all the Western European states with such a system, people are still paying for healthcare through taxation which is used to fund healthcare provision. These systems also face problems of over-stretched resources and rising demand (a greater problem in Britain than in France or Germany).
However, the question is not whether "socialized" healthcare would be a perfect system, but whether it would be a better system. If the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, how can we be satisfied when a basic right is denied to so many of them?