Originally posted at Cross Left.
The Following Is The First Installment of What Will Be a Series of Posts on Universal Heath Care.
Detractors of universal health care claim that it will lead to either Socialism, Communism or Fascism. That is untrue. If anything, it will fortify the average American’s ability to acquire and keep both their homes and businesses by taking away the threat of bankruptcy via medical expenses.
I was recently watching The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 film adapted from John Steinbeck’s classic work of displaced Depression-era farmers harshly transformed into migrant workers. In this day of debate over the merits of universal health care, one particular scene stood out above the others.
When handed a eviction notice by the agent for the foreclosing institution, the character Muley Graves rhetorically cries out, “There ain't nobody gonna push me of my land! My grandpa took up this land 70 years ago, my pa was born here, we were all born on it. And some of of us was killed on it! ...and some of us died on it. That's what make it our'n, bein' born on it,...and workin' on it,...and and dying' on it! And not no piece of paper with the writin' on it!”
How can anyone fail to comprehend the anguish of character Muley Graves as he is dispossessed from his farm? This powerful scene – and the one that follows in which we see the Graves homestead callously bulldozed to the ground – illustrates how circumstances beyond one’s control could easily deprive an individual of everything that was saved and sacrificed for: a place to live, a place to work and the sense of dignity that comes from financially supporting one’s self and family. The ability to own property, one of the most cherished of American institutions was all-too-easily wrested from even the most diligent and hard working by the perfect storm of unfortunate events.
And yet seventy-plus years later for too many property ownership is still imperiled by unforeseen events. Just as throughout the 1930s Dust Bowl small farmers and sharecroppers alike were driven from their homes by forces beyond their control, the lack of affordable health care is today’s dust storms, ready to blow down and destroy the average American’s financial stability. It is the force majeure that still has the power to drive us from hard-earned home and business ownership.
In August 2008 the web site Medscape reported that “...47 million people, or 15.8 percent of the U.S. population, were without health insurance during 2006 — a 4.9 percent increase.”
Why does this matter? Simply because more and more Americans are becoming increasingly vulnerable to poverty and destitution by dint of catastrophic illness. Just as dust storms turned proud farmers into migrant workers so too can cancer, spinal cord injury or muscular dystrophy threaten to deprive millions of the defensive ownership of a home or a business.
A recent study on medical cost related bankruptcies was recently published in The American Journal of Medicine. It concluded as follows:
Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.
Opponents of universal heath care engage in the use of baseless fear tactics. They will scream that what both the Democratic Congress and President Obama is trying to do is implement Socialism or worse, Communism. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Socialism is when government controls the means of all production and private property ownership is eliminated. Communism is socialism with the added ingredient of the totalitarian state. Neither the legislative proposals of Congressional Democrats nor the desires of President Obama reflect even a scintilla of a Marxist agenda. If anything, they reflect the very American ideal of strengthening the individual’s ability to privately own a home and a business. It accomplishes this goal by giving us all the freedom from the fear of medical cost-induced bankruptcy.
The Communist-Socialist denigration of universal health care has been around forever. Yet how do universal heath care opponents explain away the fact that just about every NATO ally that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us throughout the Cold War all have single payer, universal health care systems? They are not forced to explain themselves because we liberals fail to call them on their hypocrisy.
Perhaps no one president stood as firmly against Communist expansion than Harry S. Truman. For all the Right’s worship of President Reagan it was Truman who saved Europe via the Marshall Plan. It was Truman who checked North Korean aggression while having the cool head to control an insubordinate General Douglas MacArthur who was recklessly advocating expanding the conflict through the atomic bombing of China.
And it was President Truman – the very same fierce opponent of Soviet Communism -- that wanted universal health care for every American.
In 1945 Truman spoke before a joint session of Congress and declared, “Millions of our citizens do not have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health care. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”
Truman – unlike yesterday’s or today’s universal health care opponents – understood defending against the “economic effects of sickness” was not only about personal physical health but also about national economic health. Capitalism functions properly if everyone has a fair opportunity to create wealth – not just a privileged few who have the funds to pay any unforeseeable medical expense. To that end, he wisely understood that the costs of catastrophic illness could make a Muley Graves out of any but the wealthiest of us.
Conservatives and neoconservatives may well get their wish and again turn back universal health care. But with that said, they should be careful in what they wish for.
The quickest way to a radical economic system is not by responsible government action but by icy indifference.
I fear the day when too many Americans bankrupted by catastrophic illness, perhaps losing both home and business opportunity begin to contemplate the viability of more radical courses of action. Perhaps more totalitarian forms of Socialism will then seem more acceptable. And it is on that day that the Right – and not a Harry Truman, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama – will have destroyed a great republic based upon democratic notions of responsible capitalism.
Next: Fulfilling President Truman’s Magnificent Vision