Compassion and Morality and the Healthcare Debate

I have now written a number of posts about the healthcare debate. It is the news topic that has been foremost on my mind in recent months. I'm not alone. We have all watched with bated breath as liberals and conservatives have fought over this issue. Emotions have run high. We saw the town hall meetings bring out the crazy fear mongerers who are convinced that the country is one step away from facism. We followed President Obama's reaction to this very volatile issue while he touted the public option as such an important piece of this legislation and then appeared to back away from it. Tonight he will deliver the most important speech of his presidency thus far. We will find out whether he will draw a line in the sand and stick to promises he made during his campaign. My sincere hope is that he has been doing what he has done a number of times in the past. Perhaps he has let the debate rage on so that everyone can have their say. Maybe now that all is said and done, he will stand up for a bill that institutes real reform and complete universal health care coverage.

You may already know that I am strongly in favor of the inclusion of a public option in the healthcare bill that comes out of congress. I have already expressed my opinion that a single-payer option would be the best system but that having the option for government subsidized insurance would be the next best thing. In previous posts I have talked a lot about the practicality of universal coverage. If everyone is covered, premiums ultimately go down for everyone in spite of higher taxes. Costs could also be cut through greater efficiency and quality would improve.

What I have not yet discussed much in my posts is something I have not heard anyone discussing very much at all. We have all been so caught up in the intricacies of the health care plan. Is it pragmatic? Will it work or not work? How much will it cost? But there is a broader issue that has only been touched upon when the uninsured and underinsured have come forward to tell there stories. Sometimes these people have been cast aside or even heckled.

Try something with me for just a moment. Try to forget about how much healthcare reform will cost or how much it will save. Put aside thoughts about taxes. Forget about which plan is the most efficient. Forget about the corrupt insurance companies. Let's think about this more philosophically. Isn't the most important reason for healthcare reform that it is the ethical thing to do?

I was reminded of this last Saturday when I first saw the movie "Sicko." This movie came out over two years ago, and I should have seen it back then, especially since Michael Moore is among my favorite directors. Anyway, it is an extremely topical film that deals with the reality of how "sick" the United States healthcare system is.

Several people were profiled and told stories of how people who had gone without care or been driven to financial ruin due to serious health problems. There were two that particularly resonated with me.

One story was about an uninsured man who had cut off two of his fingertips in an accident. He was told that he could have them reattached, but one of the fingers would cost $60, 000 and the other would cost $12,000. Essentially he was faced with the choice of which finger to have reattached if any. He could not afford the $60,000 but was able to manage the $12,000, so he is absent one fingertip to this day.

The other story was of a woman who had insurance through the hospital where she was employed. Her husband was also covered under his wife's insurance. One day they discovered the husband had terminal cancer. They thought he would die until they discovered that a bone marrow transplant was possible and that the man's brother was a match. It had a happy ending because the man survived, right? Wrong! A decision-making panel for the insurance company decided to deny coverage of the procedure even though it had been successful before on the grounds that they deemed it "experimental." At that point in the film my husband turned to me and said, "Now that was a real death panel." Honestly, I am not a big crier, but the irony brought tears to my eyes.

What is my point in retelling these two stories that you may have already heard about two years ago? It is simply to illustrate that this debate is more about ethics and compassion than anything else. What is happening to people is immoral and cruel. How is it that we are telling people to make a choice between body parts or that we have the capability fix you, but we are not going to do it? At times I feel like I am living in a science fiction novel.

I'm not that naive. I realize that the details of how to achieve healthcare reform are not that simple, but isn't that which is at the crux of the debate really that simple? Shouldn't we have universal coverage because we want everyone in this country to thrive and because we care about our fellow citizens? For years I have been trying so hard to wrap my head around the reason that people so often give for not wanting reform. How many times do you hear this? "I work hard. I don't want what is mine taken away. I don't want to pay for someone else's coverage." I still cannot grasp this mind set on so many levels.

My family has basic health insurance. At the moment we are happy with that insurance, but we have not had any catastrophic illnesses while under our current plan. (I could tell a far different story about a previous plan, but that is for another discussion) Yet I am still dissatisfied with the state of health care. I do worry about what would happen if we ever lost our health insurance, but I also want every single person to have access to basic healthcare because it is the right thing to do and the compassionate thing to do. We don't send our seniors out into the forest to die. We give them Medicare. People in a number of other industrialized nations would think I was silly for making such a statement. They don't even question this basic principle.

Let me try putting it another way. Let's say a child comes to the door. The child has been injured and needs help. Almost no one would be heartless enough to turn that child away. Few would deny that child help because of what it would cost them in bandages and medicine or even think about this. Why? Because helping that child is the compassionate thing to do. Universal healthcare is nothing more than this on a national scale. We live in a society, and we have the obligation to help one another survive.