Socialism - It's Not Just for Marxists Anymore!

Alright, folks, we've got a pretty big backlog of blog items thanks to all the politicking around these parts lately. Important items of discussion such as why on earth the wardrobe people over on Heroes insist on making Hayden Panettiere look like she's one pinprick away from exploding. She is tiny in real life, yet they somehow squeeze her into skin-tight jeans from Gap Kids that are painted on and glossify her overly made-up face so that she looks water-logged and bloated all the time.

Or how Chipotle gets away with hiring only Mexicans. Is it a reversal of the staffing practices of all other restaurants around whereby the white people are in the back and the Mexicans are at the counter?

But before we return to our regular schedule of inanities, I must raise for discussion a slightly more serious question. Stuff a piece of paper into the White House Suggestion Box, if you will.

What is so frightening about universal healthcare?

See, it's annual benefit enrollment time at work for both me and The Husband. Educated, experienced and extremely lucky as we are, we've got great jobs with excellent benefits. In fact, our respective companies each offer two health plans, so we're mixin' and matchin' stuff from a wide variety of options.

Working in insurance as I did for a few years, I'm no stranger to benefit summaries. But what does seem strange is talking about primary care physicians. Or co-pays for check-ups. Or out-of-pocket maximums for cancer care.

To some, this pay-as-you-go American brand of healthcare is awesome. Just read all the op ed pieces in Canadian newspapers extolling the virtues of the Mayo Clinic. Just listen to the horror stories of hallway medicine and three year waits for hip replacements. The solution, so many sigh, lies to the south, where their American neighbours get what they need when they need it.

And this is true.

Of course, it's only true if you have good health insurance. Sure, there's MedicAid, but that's for the really poor. It's the not-so-really-poor and working-but-still-struggling people that really feel it. To be underinsured is worse than to be uninsured.

What good is next-day service by the top specialist in the country if your HMO says you're not eligible for treatment? What good is top-notch cancer care that leaves you financially destitute and breaks apart your family from the stress?

And why, pray tell, is access to healthcare tied to employment? You know all the stories you're reading about the financial tsunami washing away America's jobs? Don't forget that those job losses go hand-in-hand with loss of health coverage. COBRA does let you continue health benefits for a little while, if you pay the premiums. Which is a tad tough to do if you don't have a paycheque. Just think about the people clutching those pink slips, heading home to a spouse with diabetes. Or a kid with asthma.

Don't forget the legal ramifications of off-loading health costs to individuals and insurance companies. Got no insurance and get hit by a car? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that you can't pay? Sue and get the other person's insurance to pay. Is it any wonder they play all those ambulance-chaser lawyer commercials on Fox?

The bottom line is that privatized health "care" means that insurance companies, whose only interest is their bottom line, are in charge of the treatment most Americans receive. And as one of my insurance company coworkers often reminded me, insurance companies are in the business of making money, not - contrary to popular belief - of providing services.

There's nothing wrong with a company trying to make money. I don't blame health insurance companies for denying benefits - it's their job. I do, however, blame them for, reluctant to give up a cash cow, scaring the American public into fearing the spectre of "socialized medicine" as they like to call it down here. As though Uncle Sam paying for your doctor instead of your HMO is the equivalent of membership in the Communist Party

I also blame a government that offloads its responsibilites towards its citizens onto private companies who, by their very nature, will work towards making benefits less (and not more) accessible.

And I blame Americans themselves, at least those who bristle at the very thought of paying for somebody else's medical bills. The American Dream is all about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps; if you can't pull yourself up, the fault is yours, not the fact that you don't have boots. It's every man for himself, and why on earth should they have to foot the bill for some lazy person who refuses to get a job and get his own health insurance like everybody else?

The big problem with every man for himself is that, someday, at some point, you're gonna be somebody else. You won't have a job. Or if you do, you won't have enough money to pay your medical bills and your mortgage.

You'll wish you lived in Canada, where your annual pap smear is free. Immunizations for your kids are free. An ER visit to start your heart again is free. Your new hip is free. You can give birth in a hospital for free (average out-of-pocket cost - with insurance - around here is five grand).

You can die in a hospital for free.

In the second presidential debate, now-President-Elect Obama (whoop! "President-Elect" - that's fun to type!) said "I think [health care] should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that."

Now I'm not sure I agree with his proposed solution for this (socialist that I am, I think taxes should be raised to pay for government-run healthcare instead of simply making privatized healthcare more accessible) but he is one hundred per cent correct that there is something fundamentally wrong about what we've got going on down here.

And so, while I wonder about saving the cheerleader from overly-tight pants and Chipotle's hiring philosophies, I'll continue to pray that I don't get sick. Because if I do, I'll have to call a moving company again. And see how quickly they can get me back to Canada.