Medicare For Each Of Us In The Age Of Coronavirus, The Current For- Profit System Inadequacies
- 'Medicare for Each of Us in the Age of the Coronavirus.'- The U.S. public—and increasingly the business community—are becoming acutely aware of the rising costs and inadequacies of our current for-profit system, particularly as the current epidemic unfolds. There is no other choice but Medicare for All. By Peter S. Arno, Philip Caper, Common Dreams, 4/3/20.
Over the past two weeks, the explosive growth of the coronavirus pandemic has forced nearly 10 million Americans to file for unemployment benefits. Along with their jobs, many have lost their health insurance, if they had any to begin with. Aside from possibly spelling disaster for these newly unemployed workers and their families, this situation puts both the public health and economic wellbeing of our country at great risk. A clearer rationale for universal, affordable, lifetime health coverage as exemplified under a Medicare For All framework would be hard to find. In this article we outline the need for a universal health plan, its historical context, and the obstacles raised by the medical-industrial complex that must be overcome.
There is a large elephant in the room in the national discussion of Medicare for All: the transformation of the US health care system’s core mission from the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illness—and the promotion of healing—to an approach dominated by large, publicly traded corporate entities dedicated to growing profitability and share price, that is, the business of medicine. The problem is not that these corporate entities are doing something they shouldn’t. They are simply doing too much of what they were created to do—generate wealth for their owners. Unlike any other wealthy country, we let them do it. The dilemma of the US health care system is due not to a failure of capitalism or corporatism per se, but a failure to implement a public policy that adequately constrains their excesses.
- "The corporatization of medical care," writes the authors, "may be the single most distinguishing characteristic of the modern US health care system and the one that has had the most profound impact on it since the early 1980s."
Since the late 1970s, US public policy regarding health care has trended toward an increasing dependence on for-profit corporations and their accompanying reliance on the tools of the marketplace—such as competition, consolidation, marketing, and consumer choice—to expand access and assure quality in the provision of medical care. This commercialized, commodified, and corporatized model is driving the US public’s demand for fundamental reform and has elevated the issue of health care to the top of the political agenda in the current presidential election campaign. Costs have risen relentlessly, and the quality of and access to care for many Americans has deteriorated. The cultural changes accompanying these trends have affected every segment of the US health care system, including those that remain nominally not-for-profit.
Excessive focus on health care as a business has had a destructive effect on both patients and caregivers, leading to increasing difficulties for many patients in accessing care and to anger, frustration, and burnout for many caregivers, especially those attempting to provide critical primary care. As a result, the ranks of primary care providers have eroded, and that erosion continues. One of the major reasons for burnout in this group is the clash between its members’ professional ethics (put the patient first and “first do no harm”) and the profit-oriented demands of their corporate employers. Applying Band-Aids can’t cure the underlying causes of disease in medicine or public policy. Ignoring the underlying pathology in public policy, as in clinical medicine, is destined to fail...
More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/03/medicare-each-us-age-coronavirus
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