The Right to Health

Oct. 19, 2006— -- The most basic question about health care reform is an old one: Should basic care be a right for everyone, regardless of income, pre-existing illness or bad genes, or should it be a privilege obtained by hard work or bestowed by good birth?

We would never argue that police and fire protection should be distributed according to income, so why should health care?

That's an emotionally charged issue, but there is one observation almost everyone agrees with: Our present health care system (a messy mix of personal, employer and government health insurance) badly needs reform.

We spend more than twice as much per person on health care as other industrialized countries do -- about $6,100 here versus an average of $2,550 elsewhere in 2004 -- yet we are the only such country that does not provide universal insurance coverage. How can that be?

Unfortunately, there is often no correlation between amounts spent and results.

For example, in 2000, Medicare spending in Manhattan was more than $10,000 per person versus less than $5,000 in Portland, Ore., and Portland had better treatment results.

We will spend more than $2 trillion (yes, that's a "t") on health care this year. Yet we rank last among 23 industrialized countries in infant mortality. One major reason for these appalling numbers is the huge number of uninsured or underinsured in our country who do not get timely care.

So why not make health care a right so every American can potentially benefit from early intervention and better prevention?