Ben, the Fire Department and Health Care

What can history teach us about today? There is an obvious debate going on in the U.S. around health care. This is not a new debate, as we have been trying to get a handle on health care for over 100 years. Much of the debate is the role of government; should it regulate or even take over health care, should health care be for profit, should we provide universal coverage? In Ben’s time, health care was very primitive, and based very much on what people could afford. Of course, you could get away with giving the doctor a chicken or some other means of bartering, which wouldn’t fly today. Although ,when you have to foreclose on your house to pay your medical bills, I guess that is sort of a bartering system. Unfortunately, 700,000 Americans went bankrupt because of medical bills last year while every other industrialized country with universal health care had exactly zero.What struck me with Ben was that he was very civic minded. In Philadelphia, he helped put together a basic police force, the first public library, would eventually be one of our first Postmaster, started one of the first insurance cooperatives, and started a community fire department. In his mind, we should all be helping each other out and cooperating in this endeavor.

It occurred to me, that we should be looking at the Healthcare debate like we look at the Fire Department, Police force, or even Public education. For instance, we don’t say that only certain people should be entitled to have the fire department come to their house when it is on fire and other's should not. Also, one should not have to pay taxes that go towards the fire department because they are not worried about their house going up in flames, or that they shouldn't have to pay to put some stranger’s fire out.(They were probably negligent in starting it anyway-smoking in bed, or forgot to turn something off, you know how irresponsible people can be, especially the poor.) Of course we don’t feel this way because we are a civilized society that would never turn a blind eye towards someone in peril, but this is what many have done in terms of health care.

There are at least 20,000 medically preventable deaths per year because the victims were one of the millions of Americans who didn’t have proper health care coverage. (With countries with universal health care, these deaths are almost zero.) What if 20,000 homes went up in smoke each year while the fire department sat around drinking beers? Wouldn’t there be outrage?! We have some of the best medical care and training in the world yet because of a poor overall health plan, care is denied or rationed beneath effectiveness by for-profit insurance companies. This would have been appalling for Ben, and it should be for us as well.