By Karen Carter / Chronicle contributor
Wednesday at 3 p.m. there will be a meeting of citizens wanting to be helpful in passing President Obama's plan for Universal Health Care. Should you be reading this before 3 p.m. and care to go, you would be welcome to attend. It will be held at the Common Ground on Fourth Street.
That there is great need for passage of some sort of legislation seems obvious. More than 47 million Americans are trying to live with no health insurance at all. And the sky-rocketing cost of care is a major cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Clearly, the system we have now does not work. Most health insurance is paid by employers, who are finding the costs, in many cases, unbearable. People are faced now with a choice of either working with no insurance benefits, or not having a job at all.
Other countries have found ways to provide health care for all of their citizens, and at far less per capita cost than Americans spend. Why cannot we follow their example?
There seem to be two reasons for our not changing our system.
The first is the cost. Universal health care would simply cost too much. Our national debt is simply too high already, and there is no way the country could afford the additional trillions of dollars the President's scheme would cost.
Those who never batted an eye at the news that we were spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq war seem now to be all upset just to think of spending so much of Americans' money. For health care.
Another and more basic reason, it seems to me, is the good old capitalist doctrine that people should not be helped, but be left to their own devices. "You're on your own" is almost a mantra for true believers, believers in social darwinism, in lifting oneself by their own bootstraps. Oh, it may all be very well to exercise Christian charity and even to believe Jesus, who commands us to love the neighbor as we love ourselves. But in the Real World, you get what you work for, and there really is no free lunch.
It is no wonder that those who hold such opinions have little use for government help for those unable to afford health insurance, or even help in paying the doctor's bill. Universal health insurance is, in such a view, un- American!
Still, something must be done. Something will be done. There is general agreement that some form of federal health benefit for all will be passed. The question is, what form will it have? The nay-sayers will use all their might to convince Congress that the President's plan is too expensive, that we simply cannot afford it.
On the other hand, most Americans seem to favor a plan known as Single Payer, that Uncle Sam ought to offer universal, no-cost health care out of the federal budget, similar to the way other contries do it.
It is generally thought that, though most people wish for Single Payer, it has absolutely no chance in Congress.
I shall be at Common Ground this afternoon. We live in interesting times.
