Is now the time for universal healthcare coverage?

By Celia Murray

I am extremely fortunate – in many ways, but in one way in particular which is the subject of this comment. 
    My husband works for a large German company and, thus, we have excellent health insurance coverage. This foreign company, which does not provide health coverage for its European employees, takes superb care of its American workers. For this I am grateful since nothing is more fundamental to our lives than our health. 
    Without good health, everything – finances, family, friends and future – may well be at stake.    
    More than 90 percent of private healthcare plans in this country are obtained through employers, and for all those who have entered the workforce in the six decades since World War II when employer provided health insurance became the norm, nothing seems more natural.  The tax code helped cement the deal – employers provide employees with health insurance and deduct the costs as business expenses, yet employees don’t have to report them as taxable income.    
    Of course, such a system leaves many out in the cold.  Just as importantly, such a system is unsustainable in the 21st century.  In June, 2006, the Brookings Institution held a forum on healthcare and, specifically, on employer based healthcare.  Of the findings presented, one was of particular note, given the events of this month – according to a comprehensive study, employers would, on average, by the end of 2008, be spending more on health care than they would make in profit.  As one commentator noted, “You can’t pay more for your health care than you are going to make in profit anymore than GM can be a health care company masquerading as a car company.  This is just an unsustainable economic situation.”  It was abundantly clear from the Congressional hearings of the past couple of weeks that a major contributing factor to the problems of the big three auto makers is the cost of health coverage for workers.    
    Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance coverage.  Many employers are using two part-time workers to fill a full-time position in order to avoid offering benefits to workers.  As the unemployment rolls grow, so grows the number of uninsured.  Even in good times, many people feel “job-lock,” an unwillingness to change jobs even when better jobs are offered, because of a fear of the loss of insurance.  In 2006, more women in America went bankrupt than graduated from college, and a majority of them did so because of health care bills.    
    Americans generally recognize that we have the best health care in the world – if one can afford it – however, Americans know almost nothing about the costs of their medical care.  What does the local hospital charge to deliver a baby or to set a broken arm?  As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recently pointed out, “When patients think someone else is paying most of their healthcare costs, they feel little pressure to learn what those costs actually are – and providers feel little pressure to compete on price.  So prices keep rising which makes insurance more expensive, which makes Americans ever-more worried about losing their insurance.”    
    Two things need to happen in this writer’s opinion – first, we, as consumers, need to be better educated about the costs of medical services.  Would you buy a tune-up for your car without first knowing the cost?   Secondly, the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation in the world that does not have a universal health care system   With 47 million people, or about 16 percent of the population without health coverage, maybe the time has come.  
    Celia Murray is a member of the Morgan County Democratic Party