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Universal Health Care

The fundamental question is: Should prompt and proper medical treatment be available for any American who needs it? If your answer to that question is no, then we do not have much to discuss. If you believe that some people deserve to suffer and maybe die because they do not have insurance, then it is reasonable to make two assumptions about you. The first is that you are somewhat cold-hearted about the sufferings of your fellow citizens. The other assumption (this one is accurate almost 100% of the time) is that you have very good insurance. Nobody who does not have insurance believes that he or she deserves to suffer rather than receive treatment.

A little test here. In which country or countries is an average citizen most likely to receive prompt and effective medical treatment without having private insurance? The United States is way down that list. At the top of the list are France-and Cuba. Many pundits claim that things are actually fine here because even uninsured patients with no funds can obtain treatment in the public hospital emergency room. It is true that if you are bleeding you can get fixed up in the emergency room regardless of your ability to pay for services. There are two huge problems with that approach.

First is the huge cost of using the emergency room. A visit to the emergency room can cost several thousand dollars for the same services that a private physician and lab could provide for a few hundred. Those with no insurance and no assets do not pay so what does it matter how much it costs? It does not matter to them, maybe, but the money to pay for that treatment has to come from somewhere. These services are paid for in one or more of 3 ways. Public funding covers some of the costs. That means it comes out of your pocket and mine in the form of taxes. There are also private charitable organizations that fund some of these expenses. The third method to cover the costs of visits to the emergency by those who cannot or do not pay is for the hospital (and the physician and the lab and the X-ray room and so forth) to raise prices charged to everybody else.

Charitable donations help but the total is nowhere near the full amount needed. That means that all of us pay at least part of the expense for treatment of those who do not have insurance (or cash), either through higher taxes or higher charges, co-pays, and premiums, or both.

The second problem with letting those who are not covered use the emergency room for primary

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