Name:   copperline - Subject:   A national healthcare system Date:   4/1/2012 9:03:02 PM

              This is a really interesting article that i’ll use to make a pro-universal healthcare argument to the forum.    BTW, i just bought a new asbestos monitor just to prepare for the flaming i expect to get…  i must be in the mood to be abused….

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137358/sonia-shah/when-superbugs-attack?page=show

              Case in point:  the recent discovery of naturally occurring super-nasty infection that has the potential to become a world-wide killer as it mutates & becomes more infectious.   Right now, it’s primarily in india.  However, the indian national medical health care system is so fragmented into areas of vastly underserved (poor) people, and vastly over-treated (rich) people.   Because it came into existence in this society, the bug stands a much better chance of developing and spreading, well beyond the boundaries of the indian border.

              For those interested, check out the article for more details while i jump to my point:  i believe having a fragmented & uncoordinated Health Care system(or should i make that systems) like we currently is not going to protect the state of our nation’s health over time, in fact, it’s going to make it worse.   As the healthcare demand grows and healthcare expenses rise, the population stratifies into groups of haves and have-nots.   Certainly, those people who don’t get adequate health care suffer terribly.   But the article points to a larger problem:   antibiotic resistant bugs are actually promoted by the lack of uniform healthcare… more easily allowing them to mutate into a more transmissible incarnation… becoming more damaging and less stoppable.

              What we have in the US  is a patchwork system primarily designed around profit-seeking medical corporations,  insurance corporations battling each other for market share while spending huge sums on that administrative portion of your healthcare dollar,  consumers who frequently can’t make sense of their insurance options, mazes of regulations to comply with, hungry lawyers…..   A country where pharmaceutical companies buy TV time to convince me that depression hurts and tell me that Cialis will really jazz up my life.

              it seems to me that only a highly centralized and uniform healthcare system, with the ability to reach the largest possible number of the US population is the only answer.  That, i think, fairly well points me toward favoring a single-payer system… like a nationwide Medicare program might look.   The article describes what an unplanned system looks like (as currently in india).   Chaotic, ineffective, unfair and unable to respond to national healthcare needs because it developed around market  forces.  This ineffective, fragmented national health care system can then actually promote bugs that have potential to become epidemic, leading to some pretty horrifying scenes i had hoped to only see in a movie….   i don’t base my argument simply on some apocalyptic scenario of mass devastation, but this article describes a really frightening nation-wide health crisis for india that’s on the verge of being exported into the developed world.     i think that if universal healthcare isn’t going to be available anytime in the future of the US, then we won’t be prepared for treating problems like bird flu, and now NDM-1 as they arrive.      

              Maybe not now, but sometime in the near future, i don’t think we will have any choice except to have a Universal Healthcare System, with all it’s very likely flaws and shortcomings…   Not a cure for everything, but better than where we are headed now.    Everybody should hope it won’t take another Spanish Flu-type calamity to prompt the changes we need, but i’ll readily admit it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow.   ;)

    Your thoughts?