Brendan Cox: Want freedom? Try universal health care – Norwich Bulletin

Brendan Cox bcox@norwichbulletin.com, (860) 425-4225 bcoxNB

Of all the disagreements that define modern politics, perhaps the most divisive of them all, the battle over health care policy, has always been the most perplexing to me.

It puzzles the logical mind to observe that uncertainty, misery and financial stress are accepted and even defended as norms when the obvious solution universal health care as a right of citizenship, sometimes branded as Medicare for all is staring us right in the face, most of the developed world having long since figured it out.

Abortion is perhaps the most morally and spiritually vexing issue ever to touch politics. There are big, important, abstract debates to have over foreign policy and our countrys role in the world. Ditto with the crisis of income inequality and policymakers role in perpetuating it. But health care? Please.

Last week, as Republicans in Washington were attempting to revive to laughable Trumpcare bill, their feeble attempt at repealing and replacing Obamacare after seven years of posturing, I couldnt help but recall the horrid politics of 2010 when the Affordable Care Act was under construction.

Obamacare, of course, was a big gift to the insurance companies, its most hotly debated provision a mandate that individuals buy their products or else deal with the IRS. In theory, it made sense because it created a much broader risk pool that helped insurers absorb other new requirements aimed at making health insurance a little bit more humane. ACA was hardly the socialist coup the right made it out to be, inspiring anger that resonates to this day anger that todays Republicans are not equipped to mollify, knowing full well that to strip Obamacare away outright would be to needlessly immiserate millions with pre-existing conditions and kick millions more off of their coverage.

Then, the political debate focused on liberty and the size of government, an eminently relevant discussion. In this case, I believe conservatives have miscalculated: We cannot be secure in our persons or our property when subjected to the dog-eat-dog capitalist wasteland that is American health care. What freedom is there in knowing that one accident, one diagnosis, one extended hospital stay might clear out our savings?

I dont consider the constant threat of personal bankruptcy due to illness not some unwise investment or business venture a feature of liberated society. I consider it a form of slavery we are slaves to the jobs that pay for our health insurance, slaves to wage garnishment and collections when those policies dont cover the bill and slaves to existential stress that pervades all corners of our lives, knowing that financial ruin lurks in every doctors office and emergency room.

No, freedom is knowing that when you get sick or injured, you will get the care you need at low or no cost. Liberty is certainty that your well-being isnt subject to the profiteering of insurance companies and the vagaries of capitalist markets.

Lets not pretend that our financial lives would be unduly affected if a higher tax contribution were to replace the health care premiums most of us already have deducted from our wages. Lets not allow dystopian visions of a nanny state preclude any rational discussion of the failings of a system that befuddles our international peers a system in which nominally free markets intersect with a labyrinthine regulatory structure, creating a netherworld thats neither government-run nor purely capitalist, leading only to confusion, opacity and half-measures of relief for the aggrieved and abused.

Keep government out of my health care is a nice idea, I suppose, but I would prefer to keep corporate profit motives out of mine. Government may not be the most efficient means of delivering a product, but its mission, to guarantee rights to life, liberty and property, is certainly more virtuous. We can demand a national health care system that hews to that purpose, if only we had the courage to accept the truth that lives in front of our eyes.

Brendan Cox is The Bulletins opinion page editor. Email him at bcox@norwichbulletin.com or follow him on Twitter: @bcoxNB.

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Brendan Cox: Want freedom? Try universal health care - Norwich Bulletin