The press and health care
I read articles like today's "Europe's Free, State-Run Healthcare Has Drawbacks" in the Washington Post and despair if the vast majority of Americans who want a similar healthcare system here have any chance at all to see it happen.
Here's a headline you won't see in the Post: "Canadians, French, British laud their national healthcare systems, dismiss problems as minor." Or, "Canadians fear to travel to U.S. for fear of having an accident and being hit with crippling medical bills." Or, "If you get sick in France, you're treated for free: no questions asked."
Too many American journalists have been cowed by the right into not writing stories they logically should write, namely that by huge majorities, residents of single-payer healthcare system countries like Canada, Britain, and France love their system. The Washington Post, which leans ever further to the right (forget about Watergate--this is penance for that), even dropped the "free" from the headline of today's story on the website. You only see the word "free" if you actually call up the story.
Do single-payer national healthcare systems have problems? Sure. But our own system has a helluva lot more. It is elitist and silly to argue that we can't have single-payer health care here because it might cause a brief delay in new drug introduction WHEN MILLIONS OF AMERICANS HAVE NO HEALTH INSURANCE AND CAN'T GET ANY DRUGS AT ALL. I'm friends with two French doctors, a husband and wife, who work at Hershey Medical Center. They've told me there are good drugs they routinely prescribed in France that are simply not available here.
It is time for all of us who want single-payer health care to begin to write letters to the editor of our local newspapers demanding that they print the truth about single-payer healthcare in foreign countries. And if that doesn't work, picket outside their buildings and call the local TV stations.