Taking Care Of Our Own

When a person browses through the pages of the Severna Park Voice, one thing becomes clear: Small businesses are a vital part of our nation. With that thought in mind, I would like to ask every small-business man in America this question: How would you feel if tomorrow when you walked into your shop or office, there was an official edict informing you that henceforth you would no longer have to worry about providing health care for your workers?

Some might say the aforementioned example is a pipe dream. However, every day in Canada and the United Kingdom, business owners – both large and small – can worry more about increasing their bottom lines than about insuring the health of their employees. Over the last half decade or so, General Motors has been able to build cars cheaper in Canada than in the U.S. The reason? Automobiles built in Canada are about $3,000 cheaper because the government – not business – handles health care costs.

Conservatives contend that health care in Canada and the U.K. is horrible because of hidden costs and limitations on access. My retort to that assertion is this: Both nations are democracies that can change national policies through the ballot box. If universal health care is so bad, why do the citizens of those nations repeatedly affirm their confidence in their national health care systems?

The reason is, despite a wide range of challenges, the people in those nations know that if some major health issue occurs in their lives, they will have access to quality care. They may have to wait longer than we do, and they will likely be treated in far more spartan surroundings, but they will have access to a quality doctor in a quality facility. Most importantly, unlike this country, if they are unemployed at the time of their health crisis, they will not have to worry about going bankrupt to pay the bill.

Several years ago, our president, in an effort to fulfill a campaign promise, worked assiduously to bring health care to all Americans. His efforts to bring about a universal health care system were blocked by the usual reactionary elements in Congress. Despite the roadblocks they threw up, the administration was able to push through a rehashed form of an old Republican health care plan that was predicated on a hybrid system that utilized for-profit companies and a collection of “Health Exchanges.”

I am not naive; the current effort has not gone well. The lack of success is partly caused by the president’s inability to sell his plan to the American people. The larger reason is that selfish elements throughout society have thrown out all the stops to preserve health care for themselves but to deny it to the less privileged who need it most.

The president’s latest move is meant to try to make the plan more workable for small businesses and ultimately to try to make it easier for the implementation of the plan in toto. In short, there is much to criticize in what critics refer to pejoratively as “Obamacare.” However, the larger point is this: Those who love to denigrate the plan, when asked to provide the details of their plan for universal care for their fellow countrymen, fall silent.

Bruce Springsteen once noted that in America “we take care of our own.” He was talking about the responsibility that each of us, as Americans, has to one another. Let’s get behind the plan to give our citizens what every other modern nation state provides: safe, reliable health care for all Americans.