Hell Yes I Want Socialized Medicine

"Socialized medicine" is the "scare" part of the latest scare tactic - favorite right wing tool for any public debate. They want us to believe that the passage of health care reform with a public option will turn our country's health system into a 1970s version of East Berlin, complete with gray walls and old ladies waiting in line for a loaf of moldy bread.

Grow up and stop with the quivering lips, Free Market Zealots (FMZs, from now on). The public option is coming, and it's high time we got back to it.

History has never been a strong suit for the FMZs. While they try to paint themselves as conservatives longing to return to the glory days of pre-regulatory capitalism, those days never really existed, because, whenever attempted, the flaws in laissez-faire economics arise more quickly than pimples on a teen in a chocolate factory. Like most fundamentalists, the FMZs want to roll back societal progress to a happier day that has never existed.

In the health care context, we are currently stuck in a historical accident of economic evolution. Traditional medicine dates back to tribal caregivers, but began to evolve as a "scientific" approach gained dominance, primarily through the wonderful "laboratories" provided by more and more horrific wars. When the rise of hospitals and their increased capital costs made medicine something beyond the scope of the genial doctor or helpful Public Health Nurse (a sadly under-appreciated part of the health care equation, but that's another blog post), charities - not entrepreneurs (other than patent medicine purveyors, but that's yet another blog post) - jumped in and tried to fill the gap.

Now, through a series of historical accidents and skillful insurance company manipulations of the marketplace, we are left with a system that illogically ties health care to employment and converts healers into profit centers.

The irrationalities of the current system are too numerous to catalog. The misery and inefficiencies are hidden in bankruptcy filings and coverage denials that are ignored by the public, because they are merely contractual disputes between a sick person and an insurer with a PR department.

Indeed, the lack of a public rallying point is the greatest tool for the status quo. Can you imagine the public outcry if a state bureaucrat denied coverage as heartlessly as a Coventry claims manager? Can you imagine the letter you would write to your government officials if you were forced to wait in a state-run waiting room as long as you've spent waiting in your current waiting room? If a public health option were to deliver exactly the same level of care that the current fragmented system delivers, we would have public agitation for greater efficiencies and improved results.

A public health option will not be a shangri-la. Mistakes will be made, as they are now, but they will draw corrective attention, rather than insurer indifference. Costs will continue to rise, though the enormous cost of multiple conflicting billing systems will be reduced.

Most importantly, though, we eliminate the incredible inefficiency of the uninsured visiting emergency rooms for unchecked chronic conditions. We can prevent the upper-middle-class family being reduced to bankruptcy because they choose to keep their child alive. We can allay the concerns of the single mother listening to her child cough and weighing whether a co-pay will force a missed meal for her other children.

Less soft-heartedly, we will also free the would-be entrepreneur who is chained to a job she must keep in order to maintain health care benefits, rather than starting her small business. We could, if we make the system broad enough, free our employers from the hidden tax imposed by insurance companies that are draining their profitability and dampening their ability to compete in a global marketplace. We would free up the cadres of people who are paid millions of dollars to produce, review, reject, approve and argue about medical bills.

It's time, people. Don't let some made-up story about some Brit who had to wait a month for hip surgery make you forget about Tracy Pierce, who died right here in Kansas City. Don't let fear of spending time in a waiting room blind you to the fact that every thirty seconds you currently wait in that room, another person is filing for bankruptcy due to medical bills they probably thought were covered.

I'm not falling for the scare tactics, and I hope you won't either. If they want to label the public health option as socialized medicine, I don't care, and I won't flinch. "Socialized" may be a naughty word in some circles, but the status quo is obscene.