Guest commentary: Universal health care
By Art Walsh 
| August 17, 2009 | 9:01 AM
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So the cost of a mandatory universal health care system is going to run us into bankruptcy? And you don’t want our country going down the path of socialized medicine? Let me pose a question to you:
You are driving down the street, and a young child sprints out in front of your car chasing a ball, with no warning, and you hit him. He is lying on the ground bleeding, he’s unconscious, and there is no one around. Do you (a) drive away and leave him there to die; or (b) call 911 for help as quickly as you can.
If you answered (b), you already believe in socialized medicine, because if that child is uninsured through no fault of his own but through the fault of his parents, he will be treated at taxpayer expense. Society has already decided that we are not going to let this child die.
Given that we already have made this decision, shouldn’t it be administered in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible? Here are some hidden savings that come automatically with a mandatory universal health care system:
1. How will this affect your car insurance? Consider this: If all medical care comes out of the universal system, the medical portion of your coverage, which protects you against claims for the medical bills of those injured through your negligence, doesn’t that significantly lower your rates?
2. If there is a truly universal system, doesn’t it include what is now paid through Medicare and Medicaid? If the programs merge into a universal system, are there savings to our troubled Social Security program?
3. What happens to worker’s compensation insurance? If medical care is universal, worker’s comp becomes merged with unemployment compensation, and there are vast savings to every employer required to have worker’s compensation insurance.
4. One factor in our immense military budget is the cost of providing health care to our men and women in uniform, their families and our veterans. If there is universal health care, are there savings to the military budget there?
5. Aren’t private pensions and retirement plans getting hammered by the high cost of health care premiums that were agreed to at a time in the past when no one could foresee the rising costs? If the health care portion of those plans is no longer necessary, aren’t the plans given a better chance of surviving?
6. Everyone knows that the cost of medical malpractice insurance is too high and drives doctors to limit their practices and make defensive decisions that add to the cost of care. If you eliminate the cost of future medical care from malpractice cases, just as with worker’s compensation and auto insurance, you have greatly reduced the cost of coverage, since future and corrective medical care is one of the largest components of any malpractice case.
7. Right now, our health insurance companies are in business for profit. That is OK. We all know that they make profit by selling coverage to people who they hope won’t need it and denying liability when they do. Those who don’t qualify for or can’t afford insurance must either neglect medical attention, which leads to greater costs later, or go to emergency rooms, which is the most expensive type of coverage available. Who subsidizes this limitation of coverage by the insurance companies? It is you and me, the taxpayers, who foot these expensive bills. Will some of this money be saved by universal health care? Isn’t it the insurance companies who benefit most from our incomplete and inefficient system of public care?
8. Finally, in the debate concerning universal mandatory health care, where are the funds coming from that have created such vigorous opposition to this program? Anyone who doesn’t realize they come from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries is seriously deluded. Yet those very advertising and public relations costs are continuing to drive up the cost of health care by their mere existence.
What has happened is that the lack of a mandatory universal health care system has contributed to the bankrupting of our country, and we can’t afford NOT to have it.
Art Walsh is with Colorado Capitol Watch.
health care reform, insurance, socialized medicine, universal health care
