Feisty!, fiery!, a.k.a. Anthony Weiner's health care town hall

[Below is an essay published here written by a med student... Read what he now thinks about the impracticality of private insurers, the (un)free market of healthcare, and the 3 words that mock anti-Government conservatives.  Enjoy!]

My name is Cameron Gibson, and I'm an MS1er here at Downstate, and a bit of a closet political junkie.  I spent much of my summer abroad, so when I saw on the news Americans yelling and screaming about something, I assumed that the Yankees had just lost a pivotal game.  When I found out that in fact people were yelling and screaming about health care reform, my interest was peaked.  I couldn’t learn much from the regular media sources (who can?) about these “town hall meetings”, so I thought I should experience one for myself.  So, with my white coat in hand and a bottle of anti-anxiety pills at the ready, I set off to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s town hall meeting last Tuesday.  Suffice it to say, I had to down the entire bottle by the end of the night!...
...and through it all I sat quietly listening to what Rep. Weiner and the audience had to say.  It was exciting, it was scary, but most of all, it was eye-opening.  
Read Cameron Gibson's full essay...

My name is Cameron Gibson, I’m an MS1er here at Downstate, and a bit of a closet political junkie.  I spent much of my summer abroad, so when I saw on the news Americans yelling and screaming about something, I assumed that the Yankees had just lost a pivotal game.  When I found out that in fact people were yelling and screaming about health care reform, my interest was peaked.  I couldn’t learn much from the regular media sources (who can?) about these “town hall meetings”, so I thought I should experience one for myself.  So, with my white coat in hand and a bottle of anti-anxiety pills at the ready, I set off to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s town hall meeting last Tuesday.  Suffice it to say, I had to down the entire bottle by the end of the night!

Now, I feel I must point out the author’s inherent bias.  Since learning anything about the American healthcare system, I’ve always known that something was wrong.  I’m a firm believer that healthcare is an inalienable right, on the same level as freedom of speech and religion.  However, I went to Rep. Weiner’s meeting a skeptic of the “single-payer option”.  After hearing Rep. Weiner--a major supporter of a single-payer system--present his argument, I was practically a convert:

• Private insurers have gargantuan 20-40%! overhead costs. Medicare and Medicaid have ~4% overhead cost.  Therefore, that alone in a single-payer system = a savings of ~$300 billion.   
• A single-payer option is one of the best ways to insure the 47+ million Americans who are currently uninsured.
  
  

Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, there are a number of reasons why we shouldn’t throw out our current system.”  Well, you’re not alone in making this argument.  In fact, there were many people--not even including the folks outside who handed out flyers of Obama’s face with a Hitler-mustache…!--there who were vehemently opposed to healthcare reform, and they made themselves known early in the evening (I think my grandmother in Oregon even heard them!). 

I would now like to elucidate a few of the arguments I heard that night against current health reform W/ the public option, and show why they are inherently flawed:

We can’t afford to reform healthcare!

In fact-and Weiner said this as well-We can’t afford NOT to!

• We currently spend more in real dollars and % GDP on healthcare than most western countries 
• but we are only ranked 37th worldwide by the WHO for quality of healthcare (if you went to Morocco you would receive better care!).   
• While more and more of us can’t afford our healthcare, private insurance continues to bring in astronomical profits year after year.  As things stand, they have no incentive to change the system, If there ever is a dip in their profit margin, all they have to do is raise the premium on their customers and the coffers are refilled! 
  
  

So, without the government stepping in in some form, whether through regulation or outlawing certain practices, we are currently set on a path of economic implosion solely from healthcare costs.

But we are a capitalist society, let the market fix the problem!

Without even mentioning the obvious example of 2008, it has been proven that the market cannot fix all of life’s problems.  Without the government, there would be no freeways, no electrical grid, no public school system (a blessing and a curse, for some), or Medicare/Medicaid (opponents sometimes conveniently forget that these are in fact government programs). 

Regarding healthcare, capitalism is not the most effective economic model because it reduces healthcare to a commodity, equal to insuring your belongings (i.e. renter’s insurance).  This ignores the fact that when someone gets seriously sick and their survival is in question, they can’t just choose not to seek medical help because they don’t feel like it (well, they could, but it would run against their Darwinian instincts).  If my TV is stolen and I don’t have insurance, I’m out a TV, whereas if I’m diagnosed with a curable cancer but have no insurance to pay for it, I either lose my life or go bankrupt (and so do my wife, siblings, parents, grandparents, etc.).  Viewing healthcare as a commodity ignores the reality & human side of healthcare.

The Government is wasteful and does a poor job of running national programs.

3 words: Med-i-care.  Ask anyone over the age of 65 with Medicare how they think the government is doing with their healthcare, and 96% of them will say they’re doing a DAMN good job!  (I’m almost certain that no other health insurance company can brag about such high customer satisfaction).

(This last point has less to do with current proposals for health reform being considered--i.e. Health Insurance Reform W/ the Public Option—and instead is only in response to a government Single-Payer system)

I don’t want my taxes to go up.

Sure, your taxes would probably go up.  You’d be paying more into Medicare, but guess what!  YOU’RE ALREADY PAYING MORE TAXES, just in a different form!  What does the middle class think their premiums are, a gift to their insurance company for doing such a good job?  Premiums have risen so drastically that the average individual now pays over $4000 each year for health insurance with a private insurer.  My question to the nay-sayers then is this: if you had the same coverage as you do now, but never had to argue with your insurance on the phone because of hidden fees, never had to search for a doctor that accepted your insurance, who cares whether the money is going to the private sector or the government!?  In fact, if everyone was paying into the same pot for healthcare, the young and old, sick and healthy, our premiums would probably go down or at least stay the same.  Spread the risk around and no one person is stuck with the bill!

These were just a few of the things that I heard being said/shouted, and through it all I sat quietly listening to what Rep. Weiner and the audience had to say.  It was exciting, it was scary, but most of all, it was eye-opening.  We are the land of freedom, where anyone has the right to express their individuality without fear of persecution or reprisal.  Somewhere along the way we lost our moral compass and veered off-course, to a place where we no longer care about the common good of our society.  We will send millions in aid to Africa every year to help the world’s poor and destitute, but I’ll be damned if I’ll help my neighbor with leukemia.