That Americans would save up to a quarter mil if the United States goes down the universal care road should be proclaimed at full and constant volume by its advocates. This is so obvious that one wonders why it is not already the standard procedure. The first item that visitors should see headlining the websites of the leading proponents of universality should be how Joe and Jane Doe stand to gain six figures. Yet Health Care Now!, Health Care for America Now!, Physicians For a National Health Program, and Single Payer Action fail to do so. Nor is it being explicitly pushed on Olbermann, Maddow, Stewart and Maher. Little is said in Newsweek, The Nation, Harpers, American Prospect, Mother Jones, The Progressive et al. Same for the Congressional Democrats who are for a comprehensive system. This particular example of lack of progressive political astuteness stems from the tendency of liberals to perceive and promote the absence of universal care as an ethical failure to care for the downtrodden, rather than as a key to solving the financial problems of the middle class. The result of this error is that the opponents to deep reform have been left free to be all too successful in deluding most into thinking that universal medicine will cost big bucks. It is not possible to overcome the political power and influence of the drug and insurance industry lobbies without convincing getting the middle class to vote them down. To win the political struggle will require progressives to emphasize the financial advantages over the moral.
Some additional points. Although an initial step in the right direction, the health reform that is likely to pass now that Democrats are opting for simple majority votes along party lines is not the fully universal system that will dramatically reduce costs whether or not a public option is included. And life saving, cost efficient health systems are not always single payer, in a number of first world nations insurance and medical suppliers are tightly regulated to achieve the low costs.
No medical system is perfect and all universal versions could use improvement. As T. R. Reid notes in his excellent comparison of national systems, The Healing of America, modest increases in funding would largely solve their problems, yet still cost far less than what we've got. Conservative claims that those poor Canadians have to come to the states to get needed treatments are grossly exaggerated. Few Canadians can afford American medicine; most who come to the states are covered by their system so they can receive treatments not available in the smaller system north of the border. Universal care enjoys strong majority support in Canada and other modern democracies, were there is far less controversy over health issues because what they have is working reasonably well. What anti-universalists do not mention is that increasing number of American live in Mexico in order to obtain the care they cannot get here, or travel to Auckland or Bangkok to undergo procedures at a small fraction of the expense -- they often still go into debt and bankruptcy, but at least they can cough up the funds to get the treatments beyond their reach in the states. It's called medical tourism.
The charge that the "death panels" supposedly integral to universal care terminate old folks' lives are absurd when the elderly enjoy longer lives after 65 in those systems than here in the states. The widespread absence of insurance, plus the denial of coverage by insurers, mean that rationing is at least as high in America. The tort reform advocated by conservatives is likely to have only a marginal effect on total costs. The same is true of drug and insurance company profits, as inflated as they are they make up a small percentage of the trillion going to waste per annum. It is the far lower cost of necessary medical procedures and drugs, the sharp reduction of unneeded treatments, and the diminution or elimination of outlandish overhead costs of insurance companies, that are mainly responsible for sharply reducing expenses in universal schemes. Claims that America is too big to apply a single system across the entire country can be dealt with the same way the Canadians do, on a regional basis.
Contending that the homeless must be able to receive quality care because it's the decent thing to do is the right thing to do, but it is not enough. Nor is explaining how the current arrangement is helping wreck the economy and leaving even some in the middle class uninsured, bankrupt, and occasionally dead. The rallying cry to the middle class majority that has the votes must be "Save up to a quarter million over your life with universal medicine!"
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