Health care as a right is hard sell, except outside U.S.
By Wendi C. Thomas
Memphis Commercial Appeal
Sunday, July 13, 2008
What is it like to be sick outside of the United States?
Well, if you are among the 47 million uninsured or 25 million underinsured in America, health care in capitalist democracies such as Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Great Britain or Taiwan is decidedly better than the broken system we have here.
Switzerland requires all its citizens to have coverage.
In Germany, co-payments are only $15 every three months. In Japan, health insurance is private and patients can see a specialist whenever they like.
In Great Britain, doctors get bonuses for improving their patients’ health. Taiwan stores its citizens’ medical histories on electronic cards, which slashes administrative costs.
And in none of these countries do people go bankrupt because of unpaid medical bills.
How do I know this? Because I was at the state’s first house party for the Frontline documentary “Sick Around The World,” a screening organized by the Tennessee Health Care Campaign and the Tennessee Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Retired doctor Art Sutherland is the president of the latter group, and Wednesday night he brought about 30 people into his East Memphis home.
These were people who, for the most part, have health insurance. For them, a lack of health care does not — at least not today — force them to choose between medicine or food.
But they realize that for too many Tennesseans, including the estimated 14 percent who are uninsured, the lack of health care is a matter of life and death.
There is no perfect system — not in any of the countries featured in the documentary, nor in any country in the world. In fact, the documentary made clear that most of the foreign systems don’t bring in enough money to cover the costs.
Unlike Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” this documentary isn’t a politically charged indictment against America as much as it is a call to glean universal health care lessons from our global neighbors.
After all, if Taiwan can insure all its citizens, why can’t we?
Why don’t we?
“It’s a really hard sell that health care is a right,” said Charlotte Borst, a Rhodes College history professor on sabbatical this year. “To me, that’s the biggest issue.”
Once we agree that health care is a right, everything else, Borst believes, is just a matter of figuring out the details of a universal health care system.
One of those who viewed the hourlong documentary was Sandy Arnold, a pediatrician at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center and formerly a doctor in Canada.
“It’s part of the Canadian national identity,” Arnold said, that health care for all is a right, and one of the values that distinguishes them from their neighbor to the south.
And therein lies America’s rub. We believe the government is responsible for providing every child an education, and everyone police protection, even that an ambulance should attend to your emergent medical needs.
But the right to health care? In America? It’s not yet part of our national identity.
Shifting that tide — and winning the inevitable fight with the health care and pharmaceutical industries — could take years.
But in the meantime, Sutherland and Emily Snyder, West Tennessee coordinator for the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, hope that voters educate themselves on Sens. John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s health care proposals before heading to the polls. (Get a side-by-side comparison of the presidential candidates’ ideas at health08.org.)
“The United States needs to use its American ingenuity and use the sense of fairness I think we still have to solve this,” Sutherland said.
To get involved
The local organizing group of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign meets next at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Memphis Center for Independent Living, 1633 Madison. The group meets on the third Thursday of each month, same time and place.
For more information about the organization or hosting your own house party to screen “Sick Around The World,” contact Emily Snyder, the West Tennessee coordinator for the Tennessee Health Care Campaign (thcc2.org), at esnyder@thcc2.org or 590-4873.