Universal Healthcare and the Common Good

The failure of the United States to establish a universal healthcare system is a national disgrace. While every other advanced nation in the world has established a comprehensive system that covers each of its citizens, the richest country in human history has not. Instead, we are stuck with a system that is incompatible with the common good and an affront to human dignity.  The current deeply flawed, antiquated system has resulted in an excessively high infant mortality rate, tens of millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules yet lack health insurance, and countless deaths that would have been averted by early detection and preventative care.
The current system is inefficient, ineffective, and immoral. The US spends a far higher percentage of its GDP on healthcare than any other nation. If this spending guaranteed that Americans would have the healthiest and longest lives in the world, it might be worth it. It does not. Under the CIA World Factbook’s 2009 life expectancy rankings, the US ranks 50th, slightly edging out Albania.
Countless families are faced with financial ruin in a system that produces poor outcomes. The wasted dollars are pulled into the coffers of health insurance companies that are exceptionally inefficient. The insurance companies’ administrative costs are obscenely high compared to the extremely popular and efficient government program Medicare (five to ten times higher, depending on the study).
These insurance companies make their profits by maximizing the amount of money they take from the healthy Americans and minimizing the amount they spend on the sick. They cherry pick the healthy, deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions, create bureaucratic obstacles to the reimbursement of necessary procedures, and embrace any other method that is useful in their relentless pursuit of maximized profits.
The free market usually produces efficiency and effectiveness. This is simply not the case in American healthcare. Not only does the market fail to ensure universal access to this basic human right, there is an absence of real competition that produces better care and greater efficiency. The only way to remedy this mess is government action, including a public option, Medicare Part E (at a minimum).
The idea that the market alone can produce universal coverage is a delusion. There is a reason why mainstream European conservatives overwhelmingly support universal healthcare systems that include a prominent role for government action. There is a reason why we have government-run schools, fire departments, police departments, road construction, and environmental cleanup.
The reason is not that European conservatives and the majority of Americans who support these programs are socialists dedicated to the accumulation of state power and control. Last time I checked, Chairman Mao and Winston Churchill were not intellectual bedfellows (though perhaps I should check with Glen Beck).
It is simply because they are necessary. Any government with even a minimal commitment to human rights and the common good is bound by duty to guarantee that all of its citizens have access to food, clothing, healthcare, shelter, education, and other basic needs. These rights are affirmed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and deeply embedded in the values and doctrines of the world’s major religious traditions.
The proper approach to guaranteeing these rights is a middle way between libertarianism and authoritarianism, anarchy and tyranny, free market fundamentalism and collectivism. Neither the state nor the market should become a false idol. In following the principle of subsidiarity, the state should only take action when the common good cannot be achieved by smaller communities, for instance, when tens of millions of people lack health insurance or to ensure that every child can go to school--conditions that demand robust government intervention. Under such conditions, the government must take action or else they are guilty of a dereliction of duty.
In terms of healthcare, those that cling to a blind, irrational faith in the free market when it has clearly failed to establish universal coverage, both domestically and internationally, are guilty either of ignorance or selfishness, the two most serious obstacles to the enactment of the common good.
Our society and government do not exist for the benefit of the few, but in order to establish conditions that foster the full intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual development of each person. An expensive system that produces mediocre coverage for middle-class Americans and fails to cover everyone cannot be defended on the grounds that the richest of the rich receive excellent care. Society and government exist for the benefit of all.
Human dignity, the sanctity of human life, the fundamental equality of every human being, and the inherent worth of each person demand a system that covers everyone. Prudence demands a system that produces real choice, including a government plan and private options. This is the sensible third-way.
After decades of obstruction, America may finally be close to creating a universal system. Since the far left is largely acquiescing to the construction of a third-way system, only confused conservatism, blatant selfishness, petty partisanship, or right-wing radicalism can block this positive development. While their voices may be loud and their lies clever, they cannot permanently resist the tide of human progress. At some point, Americans will wisely demand a universal healthcare system and it will be created. Let us all hope that the time is now, before more Americans die needlessly out of ignorance, indifference, or selfishness.