Trump points the way to universal health care!

In all the articles I’ve read about President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization, I have yet to see a single word about what I consider the biggest lesson of this whole affair: That Trump, unlike the great majority of US citizens, has access to unlimited health care, without having to worry about pesky things like bills and co-pays – let alone having to worry about facing a huge final bill that might be multiple times his annual income, as many people in the US who are without health insurance do today.

However, I’m certainly not advocating that Trump be sent a hefty bill when his disease has passed (and I honestly hope he doesn’t die from his illness, even though he’s built a kind of cottage industry based on hinting that opponents like Hillary Clinton and criminal suspects who haven’t been tried should be summarily dispatched to meet their Maker, by whoever happens to have the opportunity and a gun to accomplish the deed). I am suggesting that it’s more and more untenable to argue that this level of health care is just “too expensive” to offer to every US resident, when Trump is the one individual who has been most responsible for the scale and deadliness of the current pandemic, and thus is just about the least “deserving” of this level of treatment.

This situation is made even more poignant by the fact that it is quite likely the Supreme Court – following the strong urging of the Trump administration – will in early December strike down the ACA altogether (and whether or not Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed has nothing to do with this result. Even if she isn’t confirmed by the time of this ruling, the current 5-3 conservative/liberal split will turn into a 4-4 tie if Chief Justice Roberts votes to support the ACA, which is likely. And the fact that the Supreme Court is deadlocked will leave in place the lower court’s ruling, which was that the ACA should be struck down in its entirety. A second conservative justice will have to join Roberts, again whether or not Judge Barrett is confirmed, in order for the Court to actually uphold the ACA). This will mean that at least 23 million additional people will be on track to lose their health insurance, beyond the already unconscionable at least 30 million who don’t have it today.

Will this likely ruling turn into the disaster that it appears to be? Actually, I think it would be a great opportunity, although only if the Democrats win both the presidency (which I’ve long regarded as certain) and control of the Senate (which I think is highly likely but not certain). I say this for two reasons. The first is that if the Court ends the ACA, there will without doubt be a grace period of at least one year - a stay of execution, if you will (and that phrase has a literal meaning in this case!).

The second is that having the ACA struck down will give Democrats all the ammunition they need to make providing truly universal health care their first order of business when the new Congress opens in January. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a single payer system like in Canada or the UK, or an insurance-based system like in the Netherlands or Switzerland (although my preference is the latter). And in designing the new system, Congress won’t be encumbered by having to accommodate the current ACA structure, which was built with a lot of compromises that will no longer be needed to get the bill passed (and if the GOP senators try to filibuster the bill, well…I couldn’t think of a better justification for killing the filibuster altogether than the fact that having the new bill go down to defeat will result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance).

And to those who will inevitably argue that the US can’t afford universal health care, even though we’re the only major industrial country that doesn’t have it now, all the supporters have to do is point to President Trump. He deserved to have the best care available. The rest of the country deserves to have it as well. 

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The tragedy in India

For a great account of what’s going on in India, read this WaPo article. And read this Atlantic article for a good commentary on how India’s wealthier class ignored the lessons of the 1984 Bhopal disaster and let the health care system stagnate, leaving the country unable to handle this sudden surge in the virus. Although it's wrong to say the system stagnated. For the wealthy, it became (and remains) world-class. Does this remind you of another health care system that, at least in the early days of the pandemic, was overwhelmed?  Both articles call attention to the Modi government’s failures, but they both try to spread the blame around. Yes, others are responsible, but the fact that – after a terrible response to the first wave of the virus – the government got lulled into thinking they’d beaten it, so they could open up completely (including holding big political rallies and allowing the annual Kumbh Mela to take place – this year in Haridwar, which I’ve visited and can ...
Read more

The Indian variant

The numbers keep improving every week. Both new cases and deaths grew at the same 0.7% rate in the past week, vs. 0.9% for both cases and deaths the previous week. And average daily deaths in the past week were 573. For perspective, the last time deaths were this low was March 31, 2020. But given that daily deaths hadn’t gone above 10 until March 15, the fact that they’d accelerated to 468 on March 31 was a bad sign (at the time, my big concern was that total deaths would end up in the low tens of thousands. In fact, they passed 600,000 last week). This morning, WaPo ran a story on the new Indian variant’s arrival in Britain, where it passed 2,000 cases recently. It seems to be at least 50% more transmissible than what we used to call the UK variant, but which is now the dominant variant in both the US and Britain. And that variant in turn easily displaced what had been the previous dominant variant in both countries, since the beginning of the pandemic (in fact, I remember a lot o...
Read more

More than ever, we’re on our own

Leana Wen, a physician and former public health commissioner for Baltimore, wrote another great op-ed piece for the Post today entitled “We’ve reached 200,000 deaths. Our response has gotten even worse than it was at 100,000.” It makes the stark point: By the most important measures of public health, we’re doing worse on a national scale than we were in late May, when the US passed 100,000 Covid deaths. Here are some of her points: “In late May, we had about 20,000 new infections per day. Now we are at double that, with  around 40,000  new daily infections. This is a high baseline to have entering the fall and winter, when the combination of quarantine fatigue and cold weather could drive people to congregate indoors and substantially increase transmission.” “In addition, restrictions keep getting lifted, even in states with surging infections. The nearly 2  million  students returning for in-person instruction will surely lead to more outbreaks, as some colleg...
Read more