Universal Health Care

Universal Health Care

I've been saying for a while that I think universal health care is inevitable. My reasoning is that employers who pay health care will realize how much they're getting screwed compared with employers (some overseas) who don't pay for health care, while at the same time the users of health care (i.e. people) will become more and more annoyed with rising prises.

Robin Cook (yes, the author, but also a doctor) has another reason. I'll let him explain for himself:

Knowledge of the genome has greatly improved our ability to predict an individual's predilection for a host of diseases. Thousands upon thousands of markers have been identified throughout the genome and linked to particular mutated, deleterious genes associated with specific medical problems.

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Not only is microarray technology easily accessible, but for-profit private insurance companies have strong incentives to use it to protect their bottom lines by denying service, claims or even coverage.

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As a doctor I have always been against health insurance except for catastrophic care and for the very poor.

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But with the end of pooling risk within defined groups, there is only one solution to the problem of paying for health care in the United States: to pool risk for the entire nation. (Under the rubric of health care I mean a comprehensive package that includes preventive care, acute care and catastrophic care.) Although I never thought I'd advocate a government-sponsored, obviously non-profit, tax-supported, universal access, single-payer plan, I've changed my mind: the sooner we move to such a system, the better off we will be. Only with universal health care will we be able to pool risk for the entire country and share what nature has dealt us; only then will there be no motivation for anyone or any organization to ferret out an individual's confidential, genetic makeup.