Healthcare and Labor

Labor has been the major contributing force to the nations healthcare access. The other force before was doctor's goodwill - which I don't mean to put down in any way. The evidence for the first statement is employer provided insurance system we have today. In contract negotiations, healthcare is the first thing negotiated.

From labor's point of view, this system, employer based, should be continued. Since union members typically have better healthcare plans than those not in unions, it makes people easier to organize. Much like how unions always fight for minimum wage against their best interests, unions will fight for single payer, non-profit insurance companies, or even complete nationalization on this issue because we are cool like that. We are so cool, we get a whole 'Labor Day' (which is coming up soon, the right winger anti-labor nutjobs should have to work that day). Labor is the only political organization that works so hard to detrench themselves.... most try really hard to entrench themselves.

So, what should happen? There are three options as stated above sorta. We could nationalize everything. All the doctors, nurses, etc. would then become government employees. This is preferable to our current system because... well... the statistics say so. Canada and Great Britain beat us in just about every statistic except cancer survival and transplants. Those things are good things to win in, but they aren't the largest killer for any population. Heart disease beats cancer. We suck at that. Cancer still kills the second most Americans, and our rates suck because we don't do a lot of early detection and prevention, it's cancer survival that we do well in. View the top ten list. Thing is, it's a dramatic jump and creates a lot of problems.

Less dramatic would be price books and single payer. This is found in Asia, and has been adopted by countries facing the same issues we are facing today there. They kick our butts in health statistics. But what about all these insurance companies? Are they inherently evil?

Germany has insurance companies, they just aren't allowed to make a profit. If an insurance company takes in too much in premiums in a cycle, they lower the premiums the next. This wouldn't be very dramatic. A right friend asked, "but then they won't be able to invest, are you prepared to lose their investments in the markets?" Hell yeah! I trust Americans to make long term financial decisions way better than people who are trying to game the system with short term investments. It leads to better job security when people aren't investing short term. When they do that, it leads to mergers and company sell-offs. I think that's what happened to the oil market not to long ago.

In the end, of the three, non-profit insurance companies are the best. Government can subsidize those who have trouble with it, they do that in Germany. But no matter what, picking any of the three is better than what we have now.