Universal Health Care--Myth and Truth

Mired Political Debate

No other developed nation's citizens have to live with the political debate over universal health care, to say nothing of the greed-driven lies that are part of that debate here in the US.

Kings, priests, and politicians have used a special political rubric since the tribal up-ramp to organized states. The special rubric elevates the speaker-author just for mentioning lofty issues and problems. But then the rubric dives into the muck and mire, instructing ordinary people to give up rights and life so that the governing, religious, and financial elites can have social, economic, and political power.

For example, the Inquisition Derivation: We must do everything we can to save the heretics' souls for the greater glory of God. Torture them to death or burn them at the stake -- and then bring us their gold, silver, and estate lands.

The Bush Derivation: We must do everything we can to save Islamic souls for Democracy and the greater glory of God. Gun them down, blow them up, torture them to death. Bring me their stray billions in cash in Brenner's diplomatic bags. Have Brenner break all the flow meters on the Iraqi pipelines so that my oil cronies can steal all they want. Allow my global central banker buddies all the war profiteering they can suck out of the "coalition of the willing" governments -- giving first priority to the private-owner central bankers of our own treasonous Federal Reserve. Give no-bid contracts to Cheney's Haliburton and to our private armies of mercenaries so that we cover up their treason. We gotta get outta here with all the money before the Yellowstone and Long Valley supervolcanoes blow up most of the western US, bury the breadbasket and national economy under several yards of volcanic glass, and shut off the sunlight for about a decade of global volcanic winter.

The Hillary Derivation: We must save the health of every American with universal health care insurance for the greater glory of warm fuzzy-wuzzy stuff. Have the superrich create hundreds of new insurance corporations that can gouge-rape the middle class a hundred times more than the Bush Medicare prescription corporations did. And then bring me the Diebold election selection. I wanna be the Prez. Let the Republicans find some way to gang-rape the middle class more than I can, and then the superrich will make one of them the Prez.

Of course, both Bush and Hillary are co-conspirators in the felony murders of US soldiers in Iraq. They should have been criminally prosecuted for that crime in 2003.

Hillary is one of the 373 members and senators of Congress whose October 2002 votes began the felony conspiracy to violate the rights of our soldiers -- the right to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress -- thereby violating 18 USC 241 and the Constitution's separation of powers -- war powers are a legislative branch function, not an executive branch function. Hillary's vote in the Senate was also an act of treason against the US, in accord with the Constitution's definition of treason, Article 3, section 3; and in accord with the finding of treason against the 1860s secessionist state legislators. Hillary's vote violated her oath to uphold the Constitution and its citizen rights, and the vote led to a war in which the vote gave aid and comfort to the domestic enemies against which US soldiers fought for their lives -- Bush and his minions being those domestic enemies. See especially, "Criminal Conspiracy and the Laws of War--Iraq".

But here's Hillary, five years later, still protected by the anti-Constitutional and illegal collusions that our 3-branch fascist despotism uses to obstruct justice and to overthrow Constitutional checks and balances. She's still living above the law -- when she should be in a federal prison along with the 372 other treasonous Congressional criminals in this heinous felony murder conspiracy against our soldiers.

And now she's a presidential candidate, hitching her star to the superrich and corporate profit motives of "universal health care insurance" -- and to the inevitable "adverse selection", with which the insurance corporations will maximize their profits by excluding those who most need health care.

Adverse selection might be subdued in the beginnings of any real Hillary program, but -- until we renew our Constitution to regulate corporations -- the superrich rule, and their corporations always win.

We need single payer universal health care -- not multi-payer universal health care insurance.

Getting there means understanding and clearing away the myths that the superrich's spin-masters and other liars have created to block our way.

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"The Case For Single Payer,
Universal Health Care
For The United States"

Outline of a talk given by John R. Battista, MD,
and Justine McCabe, PhD, Moodus, CT, 04 June 1999

Used by permission of Dr. Battista

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1. Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care as a right of citizenship? The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship. 28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems, while 1 (Germany) has a multipayer universal health care system like President Clinton proposed for the United States.


2. Myth One: The United States has the best health care system in the world.

• Fact One: The United States ranks 23rd in infant mortality, down from 12th in 1960 and 21st in 1990.



• Fact Two: The United States ranks 20th in life expectancy for women down from 1st in 1945 and 13th in 1960.



• Fact Three: The United States ranks 21st in life expectancy for men down from 1st in 1945 and 17th in 1960.



• Fact Four: The United States ranks between 50th and 100th in immunizations depending on the immunization. Overall US is 67th, right behind Botswana.



• Fact Five: Outcome studies on a variety of diseases, such as coronary artery disease and renal failure show the United States to rank below Canada and a wide variety of industrialized nations.



• Conclusion: The United States ranks poorly relative to other industrialized nations in health care despite having the best trained health care providers and the best medical infrastructure of any industrialized nation.

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[SN Note -- Much of Facts Two, Three, and Five above are due to the American medical industry's suppression of EDTA chelation therapy, beginning in the mid 1960s. EDTA chelation is a primary preventive-curative therapy in many countries for atherosclerosis -- the sludging of the vascular system. EDTA chelation is an IV-infusion treatment that, in a sufficient series, results in a biochemical cleaning of the vascular system. Atherosclerosis is a leading cause of many deadly and debilitating diseases triggered by its restricted blood flow, which inhibits the body's natural healing mechanisms. The list includes such killers as heart disease, stroke, cancer, adult onset diabetes, gangrene, and kidney failure -- diseases from which the medical industry makes obscenely excessive profits.

Having received a 25-treatment series of EDTA chelation from an outside-the-VA doctor as a gift from a colleague, July 2005 to February 2006 -- at a time when atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease had me close to death -- I can testify to its success in the cleaning of the entire, head-to-toe vascular system. (Coronary artery disease is nothing more than system-wide atherosclerosis that especially effects the coronary artery in a particular patient.)

The balloon angioplasty offered to me by VA Medical would have opened only several inches of just the coronary artery near the heart. At the same time, it would have left all the systemic vascular sludge in place to continue blood-flow restrictions throughout the body and to cause other life-threatening diseases. Some few years later, sludge from the rest of the vascular system would have migrated into the ballooned and stinted coronary artery, re-sludging it, and repeating the need for balloon angioplasty or even on to open-heart surgery.

Without the suppression of the relatively inexpensive EDTA chelation, the medical-pharmaceutical industry would lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year from hospitalizations, surgeries, and prescriptions. Losses in health care insurance would be similarly catastrophic to those gouging corporations.

Suppression of EDTA chelation starts in the National Institutes of Health, Congress, and health insurance board rooms and carries down through medical school curriculums, hospitals, and county medical boards with the use of many tactics. Of course, the suppression is upheld by Medicare, Medicaid, and VA Medical.

The heart of the matter: the probable cost-effective adoption of EDTA chelation as a preventative-curative treatment for atherosclerosis is surely one of the leading reasons that the US does not have universal health care.

Artherosclerosis, and its spin-off diseases, costs us over one million needlessly early deaths every year. The disabling diseases and early deaths take loved ones and friends, causing wide circles of unnecessary anguish and grief. The hard medical science done from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s could have halted the unnecessary anguish and grief repeated among millions of Americans every day. However, hard science and medical ethics were eclipsed by the mid-1960s-development of the heart-lung machine and the advent of hugely expensive and unnecessary open-heart surgeries by the thousands every year.

Forget Lasagna's modern version of the Hippocratic Oath. Since the mid 1960s the American medical industry -- in league with the pharmaceutical industry, our fascist national government, and medical insurance corporations -- has not followed the prior work of eminent medical scientists. For all those years, the American medical industry has followed greed. This combination of industries and government has been a world-class evil, historically second only to the Nazi Death Camps. With over 30 million needlessly early American deaths since the mid 1960s, the medical industry's use of artherosclerosis for profit and power, while suppressing EDTA chelation, is the American Holocaust.

Happily, not all doctors are part of the medical industry.

There is a large, cogent literature that backs my claims here. See especially the biblio page, EDTA Chelation Therapy, on Dr. Elmer Cranton's web site. Health food stores with good book sections are good resources for print media and books on EDTA chelation.

Clearly, we need a single payer, universal health care system in which EDTA chelation is not corruptly and greedily suppressed, but is freely available. Universal health is not liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, or communist. Universal health does not have an ideological label. End, SN Note]

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3. Myth Two: Universal Health Care Would Be Too Expensive.

• Fact One: The United States spends at least 40% more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country with universal health care.



• Fact Two: Federal studies by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting office show that single payer universal health care would save 100 to 200 Billion dollars per year despite covering all the uninsured and increasing health care benefits.



• Fact Three: State studies by Massachusetts and Connecticut have shown that single payer universal health care would save 1 to 2 Billion dollars per year from the total medical expenses in those states despite covering all the uninsured and increasing health care benefits.



• Fact Four: The costs of health care in Canada as a % of GNP, which were identical to the United States when Canada changed to a single payer, universal health care system in 1971, have increased at a rate much lower than the United States, despite the US economy being much stronger than Canada’s.



• Conclusion: Single payer universal health care costs would be lower than the current US system due to lower administrative costs. The United States spends 50 to 100% more on administration than single payer systems. By lowering these administrative costs the United States would have the ability to provide universal health care, without managed care, increase benefits and still save money.

4. Myth Three: Universal Health Care Would Deprive Citizens of Needed Services.

• Fact One: Studies reveal that citizens in universal health care systems have more doctor visits and more hospital days than in the US.



• Fact Two: Around 30% of Americans have problem accessing health care due to payment problems or access to care, far more than any other industrialized country. About 17% of our population is without health insurance. About 75% of ill uninsured people have trouble accessing/paying for health care.



• Fact Three: Comparisons of Difficulties Accessing Care Are Shown To Be Greater In The US Than Canada (see graph).



• Fact Four: Access to health care is directly related to income and race in the United States. As a result the poor and minorities have poorer health than the wealthy and the whites.



• Fact Five: There would be no lines under a universal health care system in the United States because we have about a 30% oversupply of medical equipment and surgeons, whereas demand would increase about 15%.



• Conclusion: The US denies access to health care based on the ability to pay. Under a universal health care system all would access care. There would be no lines as in other industrialized countries due to the oversupply in our providers and infrastructure, and the willingness/ability of the United States to spend more on health care than other industrialized nations.

5. Myth Four: Universal Health Care Would Result In Government Control And Intrusion Into Health Care Resulting In Loss Of Freedom Of Choice.

• Fact One: There would be free choice of health care providers under a single payer universal health care system, unlike our current managed care system in which people are forced to see providers on the insurer’s panel to obtain medical benefits.



• Fact Two: There would be no management of care under a single payer, universal health care system unlike the current managed care system which mandates insurer preapproval for services thus undercutting patient confidentiality and taking health care decisions away from the health care provider and consumer.



• Fact Three: Although health care providers fees would be set as they are currently in 90% of cases, providers would have a means of negotiating fees unlike the current managed care system in which they are set in corporate board rooms with profits, not patient care, in mind.



• Fact Four: Taxes, fees and benefits would be decided by the insurer which would be under the control of a diverse board representing consumers, providers, business and government. It would not be a government controlled system, although the government would have to approve the taxes. The system would be run by a public trust, not the government.



• Conclusion: Single payer, universal health care administered by a state public health system would be much more democratic and much less intrusive than our current system. Consumers and providers would have a voice in determining benefits, rates and taxes. Problems with free choice, confidentiality and medical decision making would be resolved.

6. Myth Five: Universal Health Care Is Socialized Medicine And Would Be Unacceptable To The Public

• Fact One: Single payer universal health care is not socialized medicine. It is health care payment system, not a health care delivery system. Health care providers would be in fee for service practice, and would not be employees of the government, which would be socialized medicine. Single payer health care is not socialized medicine, any more than the public funding of education is socialized education, or the public funding of the defense industry is socialized defense.



• Fact Two: Repeated national and state polls have shown that between 60 and 75% of Americans would like a universal health care system (see The Harris Poll #78, October 20, 2005).



• Conclusion: Single payer, universal health care is not socialized medicine and would be preferred by the majority of the citizens of this country.

7. Myth Six: The Problems With The US Health Care System Are Being Solved and Are Best Solved By Private Corporate Managed Care Medicine Because They Are The Most Efficient

• Fact One: Private for profit corporation are the lease efficient deliverer of health care. They spend between 20 and 30% of premiums on administration and profits. The public sector is the most efficient. Medicare spends 3% on administration.



• Fact Two: The same procedure in the same hospital the year after conversion from not-for profit to for-profit costs in between 20 to 35% more.



• Fact Three: Health care costs in the United States grew more in the United States under managed care in 1990 to 1996 than any other industrialized nation with single payer universal health care.



• Fact Four: The quality of health care in the US has deteriorated under managed care. Access problems have increased. The number of uninsured has dramatically increased (increase of 10 million to 43.4 million from 1989 to 1996, increase of 2.4% from 1989 to 1996 -- 16% in 1996 and increasing each year).



• Fact Five: The level of satisfaction with the US health care system is the lowest of any industrialized nation.



• Fact Six: 80% of citizens and 71% of doctors believe that managed care has caused quality of care to be compromised.



• Conclusion: For profit, managed care can not solve the US health care problems because health care is not a commodity that people shop for, and quality of care must always be compromised when the motivating factor for corporations is to save money through denial of care and decreasing provider costs. In addition, managed care has introduced problems of patient confidentiality and disrupted the continuity of care through having limited provider networks.

8. Overall Answer to the questions: (1) Why doesn’t the US have single payer universal health care when single payer universal health care is the most efficient, most democratic and most equitable means to deliver health care? (2) Why does the United States remain wedded to an inefficient, autocratic and immoral system that makes health care accessible to the wealthy and not the poor when a vast majority of citizens want it to be a right of citizenship?

• Conclusion: Corporations are able to buy politicians through our campaign finance system and control the media to convince people that corporate health care is democratic, represents freedom, and is the most efficient system for delivering health care.

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Non-outline text © 2007 by Stephen Neitzke

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