I have an alarmingly long list of phobias, any one of which
can wake me up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. The least terrifying of my
nightmare fears has to do with a '57 Chevy that won't start in the
middle of the Sahara desert on a really hot day.
A more scary one involves the U.S. Army losing my discharge
papers and sending a couple of MPs to my house at 2:15 a.m. to drag me
off kicking and screaming to the nearest infantry training base where
I'll have to do infinite numbers of push-ups to make up for being AWOL
since 1956.
And lots more phobias that I can't talk about in public.
You get the idea.
But at about the time I hit my 70th birthday, even scarier
nightmares descended on me: Male nurses come into our bedroom, tie me
down to a stretcher and haul me off to a hospital. When I ask them
what's wrong with me, they say "We can't tell you that, but it's going
to be very painful and very expensive and your medical insurance won't
cover it. We won't be able to cure you, but you'll have to sell your
house and your car and cash in all your retirement funds to pay your
hospital bill."
And that's when my wife, bless her soul, gives me an elbow
in the ribs and tells me to stop whimpering and wake the hell up so
she can get some sleep.
I thought of that recurring dream when I read a piece by
Robert Pear in last Monday's New York Times.
It's about Vicki H. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate
agent in North Carolina who makes about $60,000 a year, but who's no
longer able to afford health insurance.
That's because she had cancer in 2005 and as a result her
2006 health insurance cost went up to more than $27,000 a year. More,
she says, than she can afford.
She remembers the New Year's Eve party a few hours before
her insurance expired:
"Everybody was saying 'Happy New Year.' But I remember
going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew
that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I
was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open
up to a door of hell…. I don't know which was worse, being told I
had cancer or finding out that I could not get insurance."
Now there's a real nightmare. Except it doesn't go away
when she wakes up.
We're a pretty rich nation compared to most others. So why
should we have nightmares about how to pay or medical bills?
Especially when there are countries whose citizens have
much lower average incomes than we have, but who can afford medical
care that Ms. Readling can't. You know why: their countries'
governments pay the medical bills.
You know: National Health Insurance. Single Payer
Programs. Or—brace yourselves—SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!!
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The Truth, Mainly
It's what most of our friendly allies already have. An
incomplete list: the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan,
Belgium, Italy, France, Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Finland,
Ireland, Israel, Holland, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden.
Among others.
You know, those backward countries whose citizens go
barefoot and make some of the best cars we buy in the U.S.
Did you know that here in America there's a group of some
14,000 doctors who call themselves "Physicians for a National Health
Program"? They tell us that Ms. Readling isn't alone, that the number
of uninsured Americans—even those making more than $75,000
annually—is growing every year.
They also tell us that "the only solution to the rising
number of uninsured and underinsured is a single-payer national health
insurance program, publicly financed but delivered by private doctors
and hospitals. Such a program could save more than $400 billion
annually in administrative waste, enough to provide high quality
coverage for all and halt the erosion of the current private system."
I know, I know, that bogeyman phrase "socialized medicine"
gives lots of Americans the heebie jeebies. But they might go away
after you compare socialized medicine hospital bills to what we've got
now.
And if you find all that too optimistic to be plausible,
here's another argument:
Let's get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and use
the money we've been spending in those places to get over our phobia
against socialized medicine. Let's trade in our casualty-producing war
for our physical, mental, and moral health.
And thereby letting me get rid of at least one of my
phobias. Maybe one of yours too.
Retired English Professor Leon Satterfield writes to salvage clarity
from his confusion. His column appears on alternate Mondays. His e-mail
address is:
leonsatterfield@earthlink.net.
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