Op Ed: Right Time Has Come
For Universal Solution
On Oregon Healthcare Rights

623,000 Oregonians have no health insurance coverage; 780,000 have no prescription drug coverage...and the numbers are growing.

113,000 kids in Oregon have no health care insurance, a recipe for disaster. Photo by Bonnie King

(SALEM) - Every strong concept finally finds its own time for full and defining application in our American culture --if, indeed, events prove both its real strength and its demanding essentiality. The 21st Century is sharpening and fully illuminating several such crucial-situations.

Practical, defensible modern methodology to contain and reduce exploding healthcare costs is surely one of those we must NOW achieve. Not so long ago, strong corporate political-money/thrust delayed, then derailed --and finally denied-- the entire American people their already widely-recognized “right” to essential healthcare protection.

Even then, from decades of prior mature public consideration and dialog, that right was established as strongly as others directly-specified in our Constitution: As part of overall citizen-security, as well as essential for ANY possible “pursuit of happiness.”

THEN it was an apparent victory for those dollar-interests managing and mostly paying/for that crucial and painful delaying action; thus perpetuating for far too long unavoidable and extremely costly consequences --as measured in both dollars and lives.

Here’s the Oregon picture NOW: 47 MILLION Un-insured nationally; in Oregon, 623,00 lack health coverage, 113,000 KIDS; 780,000 Oregonians have no prescription drug coverage.

Since that ‘94 political collapse --allowed by Congressional faint-heartedness and failure to provide surely-Constitutional obligations for all-- monstrous woes for many common-folk have surely multiplied.

Many are NOW painfully caught in a truly intolerable economic-vise, by rocketing rises in regulated prescription costs, as well as sickening slashes in federal funding shaping Oregon’s Plan.

Healthcare is now, according to TIME this week, the topmost issue concerning the national electorate.

A recent Virginia poll found that healthcare was more important to voters than terrorism, taxes, immigration, or moral issues, and should be a top priority for Congress.

Ironically, the rushing onslaught of globalization, forcing still further reliance on the week-reed of ostensible “free trade”, has now put those corporate entities pirating single-pay healthcare in the Clinton Administration “right behind the eight-ball”.

They now must face more-than-eight/times increased-costs of most medical-benefit plans they must pay to health-embattled workers --and this is destroying that once-natural American competitive advantage, until now ameliorating the meaner aspects of globalization.

How vital a factor this has become is borne in on us in Oregon, inexorably, with the exodus to Mexico of Portland’s long-famed Freightliner heavy-truck production --reconstituted in a $300-million new plant there.

Stated or not, healthcare costs are surely one cause for this worker’s catastrophe, “right here in River City!”

Many other Oregon-corporate situations could be cited --and, inevitably, will be, sooner-or-later.

SOMEthing must be draining away that decades-long traditional trade-advantage; in many corporate situations it is, undoubtedly, rocketing-rising healthcare costs: Once an unassailable worker-benefit, but now another anchor weighing down that merciless “bottom line” demanded by Wall Street.

One shining situation arising from the New Deal-days --long praised by all involved until very recently-- was the precedent-setting initiation of widespread healthcare benefits, as one element in mutually satisfactory union-won gains, pleasing for both workers and management.

That has been a burgeoning advantage over decades for American business and industry --now wiped away since most of the rest of the modern trade-world has now swung solidly behind “universal” --often “Single-Pay”--forms of healthcare for workers.

Twenty-eight industrialized nations have single-pay universal healthcare systems; Germany has a multi-payer system, as proposed (in ‘94!) in the Clinton Plan, sabotaged by corporate dollars.

There has to be solid economic reason for the comparatively-rapid rise in healthcare-share among those nations --and there is surely economic and social proof, too numerous in kinds and depth of detail for full citation here.

In the U.S. --and Oregon !-- the once-strong “social contract” has become tattered, torn --and clearly out-moded for the 21st Century. BUT the inescapable fact --found realistically in many statements, Annual Reports, industry magazines, and widely in the business press --is that America’s once-vaunted comparative-cost advantage, bolstered and pursued avidly via union and corporate management together, has now vanished into the same “thin air” as far too much of our also-vaunted “U.S. inventiveness” and stronger “education-for-all”.

It’s a strange anomaly that the nation where much of these firm-and-strong every-person life-shaping advantages first came to widespread reality is now faced with continuing and expanding crises in each and every aspect of culture and life, so long-developed, expanded --and shared.

Healthcare around-the-world is NOT a new concept nor is the effective management of national healthcare needs. Literally decades-ago, this inevitable essential right in any modern-state culture has had to be faced head-on by other broad and diverse population groups.

Short of listing every such operation and its history --”ancient” in some cases !-- let us here conclude that, since “single-pay” systems are so universally recognized, in both operation economies and via participant-evaluation, those so organized have clearly become the most valuable, at the least cost in dollars, risk and inconvenience, all around our modern world. (Again, depth, diversity and volume of documentation preclude inclusion here, but available.)

We are extremely fortunate in Oregon to have a former Governor --ironically, an emergency-room physician!-- as a nationally-recognized leader, with his Archimedes Proposal perhaps a pattern for national adoption as basic process for re-inventing a broken system replete with inefficiencies, high and rising costs, and exploitation by moneyed corporate interests. Dr. Kitzhaber was the originator of the Oregon Health Plan, which worked well until slashed by legislative decree under economic pressures.

Again fortunately, with depth and detail of close attention, speaking well for comprehensive concern and completely authentic leadership in this field, we also have Sen. Wyden at work here, too.

There are other Oregonians also who have devoted demanding and extremely-detailed attention to this ongoing consequential catastrophe, surely wrought in large part by corporate meddling-for-dollars.

History documents the destruction of earlier action, denying earlier timely remediation sure to have saved billions; failing to consider the human wailing and woes --and premature “departures” too-- surely set upon us by those actions-then --but NOW, at last, recognized by most cogitating citizens.

So we will wait-and-see, while our assorted and well-informed healthcare gurus gather their mutual strengths to advise our struggling Legislators.

As in a number of other areas to enter our State, again, in this inexorable “21st Century marathon”: THIS TIME they do not lack for high-class, extremely credible and authoritative advice, counsel, data, and depth of direction to guide --and even shape effectively and efficiently--their decision on this deepening healthcare crisis.

There’s simply no possible rational-reasonable action left to them but To ACT NOW!

The only arrows left in the quiver must fly in the same direction --and soon, too.

The wit, wisdom and the already-expressed will of the common people is plainly right on the Legislative table; for everyone to see, understand and accept.

What’s left to be learned is their will-to-act, and the Legislative wisdom to do it well, rapidly --and right-on-target.

This is ONE shot they had surely better NOT miss, if again our State is to:

“...Fly With Her Own Wings!”

1. Clinton Plan, first term.
2. Numerous recent reports, articles, TV programs and other media information.
3. David S. Broder; ”Growing Drumbeat”; OREGONIAN, 2/5/07.
4. 1994 media coverage.
5. Universal Health Care Coalition.
6. TIME, p.42, 4/4/07
7. Mother Jones, p. 26, Jan/Feb/07
8. Recent OREGONIAN coverage.
9. New York Times, 4/6/07

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