Sure, America cannot afford health care reform right now; but will it ever?

While this is certainly the most reasonable argument for delaying health care reform — we can’t afford it right now — it still misses the point. When in recent memory have we ever “been able to afford it”? The fact is for the past 30 years not one Republican administration has pledged the goal of ensuring that all Americans have good, affordable health care. Rather, the very idea has been associated with death, evil, backwardness, etc. by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. It surely did not help that Bill Clinton and Obama entered office in the midst of major recessions caused largely by policy decisions made by their respective preceding Republican administrations.

But White House administrations cannot take all the blame. A quick reading of history shows evidence of a trend in public thinking that “we do not want Socialized medicine.” Indeed the American people have gone on record many times as not wanting compulsory health care coverage for all US citizens. Teddy Roosevelt lost the presidential election in 1912 after running on a platform advocating national health insurance. A national health insurance bill put up to the vote by the Truman administration after WWII was rejected by American voters. In the 1980s, in response to escalating heath care costs during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, there was a movement toward consolidating hospital systems and other health care related businesses under corporate control. Yet even into the 1990s as health care costs continued to rise (at double the rate of inflation!), health care reform legislation continued to fail.

It’s clear that the current employer-based system of health insurance cannot last. It’s just not sustainable. But like many things in a country of 300 million people, change cannot happen overnight. Just look how long it took society to accept basic facts that smoking is not healthy, CFCs destroy ozone, CO2 emissions are bad, recycling is good, and clean water is good, before laws were passed to help drive these facts home. There needs to be a shift in public thinking about health care in the US and I will not fault the Obama administration for trying to lead the way.

By the way, we sure would free up a lot of money by reducing military spending (currently around 30% of US tax collections!). In so doing, we could defend the dollar, reduce the projected deficit and finance health care reform simultaneously.