I was contacted yesterday evening by Tony Garr of Tennessee Health Care Campaign, a health care reform advocacy group headquartered in Nashville. He asked if I would be willing to do an interview with the Memphis media. Channel 3 News was doing a story on the affects on local small businesses from the federal health care reform bill which was passed late Sunday. I am a small business owner, and Channel 3 wanted to get perspectives from both sides of the issue: one business that was opposed to the reform, and one in support of it. I was nervous about doing the interview, not wanting to look like the Albert Brooks character in "Broadcast News," who gets called on at the last minute to go on camera to fill in the Sunday Evening news chair. He develops a disturbing but hilarious case of flop sweat. But my interviewer, Danya Bacchus quickly put me at ease and I tried my best to be calm and poised.
I told Danya at the outset that I was not smart enough to know all the answers to this extremely complicated problem, but I thought I could at least offer my story to show how the failure of the system has affected me and my family. Within the limited amount of time that any 10:00 o'clock news story allows, I think my story was given a good look. However there were two points I made to Danya that were not able to make it to air time, I'm sure due to time constraints.
Please do not take the following quote out of context. I am not comparing insurance companies or the current health-care system to Nazi Germany. But I do believe this quote will illustrate my point about speaking out and taking a stand on this issue. Martin Niemoller said in a speech in 1946 to describe the inactivity of many of the German people during the time of the Nazi's:
"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Fourteen years ago, insurance premiums for my family, even with my wife's MS were significant, but manageable expenditures. However, over those years, the premiums have grown into the single largest item(s) in our family-business budget. For us, this expense is larger than our mortgage, utilities, cable bill, and phone bill combined. And I might add, these are policies with maximum deductibles, which mean we have further significant out of pocket expenditures as well. For those of you who have good insurance policies through your work, you are blessed. And I am happy for you. But, whether you realize it or not, your employer is going through the same kind of premium creep that we have experienced. It's just not quite as drastic as in our case because of group policies, depending on the size of your company. We have individual policies; one for my wife with MS, and one for myself and our one college aged son living at home. We have no access to a group policy because of the nature of my independent business. And we have no choice in insurance policies with other insurance companies for my wife because of her "pre-existing condition." She is as the insurance industry terms it: uninsurable.
I ask you, as an employee haven't you had to make ever-increasing contributions to your insurance coverage over these same 14 years? Do you think your employer is just trying to get out of paying for your insurance? My guess is they are right there with you having to find money from their bottom line, to match with yours to pay for ever-increasing premiums. Whatever your contribution is today, I'll be willing to bet that it will double or triple, like ours has, over the next 10 to 15 years, if we don't get a handle on this problem.
The second point I want to make is that this problem is affecting your neighbors. Yes, neighbors as in, people who live in your neighborhood. It is happening to the people across the street, and around your corner, at the end of your cove, not just folks who live on the other side of town, in subsidized housing and run down neighborhoods, or wherever you think they live. The face of this problem looks just like the one you look at every morning in the mirror. It's not "out there," somewhere. It may even be in your own family -a brother, sister, cousin, son or daughter.
It's easy for some people to put this off as an issue for "those" people, who don't work hard enough, or don't have the will to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. But the reality is, it does affect millions of people who pick themselves up by their bootstraps, but have been hit with a difficult, long term, chronic disease through no fault of their own. How fair is it, how American is it that someone really trying to live the American Dream, trying to soar with the eagles, is overwhelmed by a financial tsunami of enormous insurance premiums and never ending medical bills? So, don't look downtown, or north of town, or south of town to see how this problem is affecting people, you can look right across your own street.
So, what's the solution? I've already said, I'm not smart enough to solve all of the problems that this issue holds. But, I do find it a problem that we've given so much control of our health care system to private insurance companies. Not that the private sector is bad; heck I'm an entrepreneur myself, owning and operating my own business for 14 years. I'm a big fan and beneficiary of private enterprise, and the cherished American ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. But, what if we gave control of our police and fire departments to private industry? What if at some point the police-company determined it was not profitable to go to certain neighborhoods; too far from the stations when gas prices rose sharply or too dangerous for their officers to patrol or even answer 911 calls? Or, what if the fire-company wouldn't answer an emergency call to a house made of all wood, because the owner should have known that his house would be more susceptible to fire than an all brick home right next door? In the same way, we have let the insurance companies cherry pick the healthiest and least costly individuals for them to insure, while excluding others through outright denials -as uninsurable, or priced them out of the market with exorbitant premiums. I do not believe the profit motive has served us well when it comes to our health-care, just as I don't believe profit would be a proper place for police and fire protection.
Although the mechanics of this problem are far beyond my intellectual capabilities, let's break it down to a somewhat simple proposition. We as a society have to ask ourselves this question: is health-care a right or a privilege? If you think it's a right, then quality care should be available to everyone, regardless of health circumstances and or economic situations. If you think it is a privilege, then I would like to appoint you…you personally…to be the single person in charge of deciding who gets proper care, and who gets denied. Would you make your choices on ability to pay? Would you make your choices on how sick someone was, or what type of disease they had; or would you decide based on what part of town they came from? With that power, I would like for you to reflect that the Good Samaritan considered none of these criteria when he helped someone who was put on his pathway in need of help. What about the two priests on the same road? And secondly, would you want the person living across the street to have this same kind of power? After all, he or she may be the last one to speak up for you; shouldn't you do the same, before there's no one left to speak for you?
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