Commentary: Affordable health care a right, not a privilege

Independence, dignity, peace of mind, respect for one another. These are the returns on our investment in national health care.

While Congress barters and bickers over competing health care proposals, tens of millions of Americans - some of them our own family members, friends and neighbors - don't have adequate care available to them when they are sick. And the tragedy is only getting worse. According to a report released last month by Families USA, each day another 6,318 Americans lose their health care coverage.1

Sure, the uninsured can visit an emergency room if they become ill. And if a person really can't afford to pay the bill, and if the hospital is associated with a university that receives federal funding, maybe they won't be charged an arm and a leg for their treatment.

But that’s a lot of ifs. Many people with no health coverage or inadequate insurance face financial ruin because of medical expenses. Researchers from Harvard Medical School found that more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies are caused at least in part by medical bills.2

And what about those who suffer with chronic illnesses and diseases? How do you suppose the parents of a child with severe asthma or people with diabetes or lupus manage without health insurance? They, too, often end up in the emergency room because they cannot afford the preventive care necessary to manage and control their disease. Sadly, they often are treated poorly, made to wait for hours to see a doctor, given minimal treatment and sent on their way with a handful of prescriptions they cannot afford to fill, only to return again and again for the same or worsening symptoms.

Neither of these scenarios, played out thousands of times a day in Michigan and across the nation, comes close to the standard we should have long ago set and met. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness may be our right of citizenship, but how do people achieve them when they are financially and emotionally devastated by poor health or medical emergency? The time has long ago come for all of us to agree that affordable, quality health care should be a right, not a privilege, in this country. The United States is the only advanced nation that does not have a national health care program. Those of us with coverage pay too much and get too little from our current patchwork system of employer-provided and private insurances. We lag behind other nations in key measures from infant mortality to life expectancy,3 while spending more health care dollars per capita than those countries with public programs.

The UAW applauds the work by three key House committees to craft legislation that will fix America's broken health care system and ensure all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care. The "America's Affordable Health Choices Act," (H.R. 3200), will do this by building on what works: allowing Americans to keep their existing health care coverage while offering expanded options for those individuals and businesses who need new ways of obtaining affordable, quality coverage.

At the same time, the legislation will slow the rate of growth in health care spending, thus reducing costs for individuals, businesses and government at all levels, and it will reform the insurance industry so people are no longer denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions or other discriminatory practices.

The America's Affordable Health Choices Act represents nothing short of a watershed in the decades-long drive for universal health care. But many hurdles along the route to its passage still lie ahead in the House. And it will have to be reconciled with whatever legislation the Senate adopts.

Meanwhile, as members of Congress take their month-long summer break, another 200,000 Americans will lose their health care coverage. Many of them will go through foreclosures and bankruptcies as a result, dealing yet more blows to our teetering economy.

All Americans, whether fully insured, partially insured or uninsured, have a vested interest in stopping this cycle of pain now. For our part, UAW members will keep the pressure on Congress to seize the moment and the momentum and pass a meaningful health care reform bill for President Obama to sign. We hope you will join us in this effort by contacting your representative and senators.

1. The Clock Is Ticking: More Americans Losing Health Coverage, Families USA (July 2009).

2. Reported by CNN June 5, 2009. Harvard study appears in August 2009 American Journal of Medicine.

3. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, updated 2008 using 2005 data.

The views expressed by contributors to At Issue do not necessarily reflect the positions of the UAW.