U.S. failure No. 1: no health insurance

By Dave Zweifel

September 21, 2005



The New York Times' Paul Krugman, who has shined by pointing out the pitfalls of the Bush administration's plans to "fix" Social Security, was right on the mark the other day with his observation that Hurricane Katrina exposed just one of this nation's failures to protect its less fortunate citizens.





The lack of health insurance, he pointed out, kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, combined.



And while the aftermath of Katrina has politicians scrambling to do something about the abject poverty in our nation's great cities, the fact that 45 million Americans - most of them working men and women - have no health insurance continues to fall beneath the political radar.



Krugman claims that health care isn't yet a crisis among the middle class in America because most in the middle class do have insurance. The worst effects are falling on the poor and the black, who have Third World levels of infant mortality and life expectancy as a result.



As he and others have noted, however, the sorry state of our health care system is starting to creep around the edges of middle class America.



When an automobile giant like Toyota decides to locate a new North American plant in Canada instead of in the southern U.S. because Canadians have a national health care system, that's starting to send a message to all Americans, not just the working poor.



When more and more companies are making their workers choose between a pay raise or continuing the company health insurance plan, more are starting to ask questions.



When small businesses have to drop their insurance plans because they simply cannot afford to pay the premiums for their employees, a lot of middle class Americans and their families are starting to notice.



A select few national politicians are beginning to advance the idea that the U.S. - like most of the other industrialized nations in the world - needs to have its own national health care plan, like Medicare, which covers everyone in America over the age of 65.



And others are starting to admit that we could have such a plan for less money than employers, workers, insurers and the rest of the convoluted system are shelling out now.



Katrina exposed one national shame. It's time the lawmakers in this country expose the health insurance shame and begin to do something about it.