When you are halfway through your last semester, things can get a little stressful. Whether you are the senior taking 20 hours just to finish things up or the one retaking the class after taking one too many tests with a hangover, it is a time for begging our bosses at internships to keep us on and sending out rÂsum after rÂsum hoping the next one will finally lead to an interview.
Parents only make things worse.
As if the almost daily check to see if you are applying for jobs isn’t enough, some of them like to drop in the fact that, in many cases, come June 1, you won’t have health insurance. Some insurance companies and state laws give a bit more time, but generally speaking, if you aren’t a full-time student, you don’t have health insurance through your parents anymore.
Try as I might to retreat into that I-am-only-22-and-perfectly-healthy mind-set, stories of high school friends undergoing treatment for various types of cancer have a way of throwing reality back into my face. I can only hope their cancers can be treated. But if their cancer comes back years later after they’ve switched from their parents’ insurances to those of their employers, chances are the cancer will be labeled a pre-existing condition, and they will have to pay for treatments out of pocket.
This shouldn’t be something anyone has to worry about. It seems too simple: Get sick or injured, go to a hospital and get treated. Massive amounts of debt should not be a factor, but that is the nature of modern medicine. Treatments cost more and more, and health insurance is the only way the majority of people in this country can ever afford to be treated.
In the case of auto insurance, this line of thinking is acceptable. If you are a careless driver, insurance companies won’t take the risk to cover you because accidents aren’t merely a high probability; they are inevitable.
It, however, is not ethical to apply the same logic to a human life.
There was once a time when if your house or business caught fire, the fire department would not put it out if you did not pay dues. But somewhere along the way, we accepted that it was the job of the government to provide public services for the good of everyone. Letting a fire burn down a building is a risk to public well-being. I would say that letting someone walk around untreated for tuberculosis or hepatitis because he or she doesn’t have health coverage or money to get treatments is an even greater risk.
How is the person that lucks into a nice job right out of college, pays the premiums and then gets sick any more deserving of treatment than the person who tries hard to find a job and gets sick before getting hired by a company?
I believe very strongly in the idea that those who work harder deserve more comforts in life. They deserve the nicer cars, the nicer houses, the frivolous but ever-entertaining consumer electronics. This person’s life, however, is no more valuable than anyone else’s.
This isn’t a communist or socialist idea. It isn’t an idea from just the Democrats. Republicans believe this deep down beneath the so-called conservative facade.
Wait until the debates leading up to the November election start, and see how many gubernatorial candidates talk about how Texas ranks near the bottom in health coverage for its citizens, specifically for children.
We all may disagree on how to get health coverage for everyone, but everyone, on some level, believes in the intrinsic value of human life and seeks to protect it through health insurance.
Is the answer nationalized health care? Should the Medicare system be opened up for everyone?
It is true that everyone would be taxed more in this case, but I personally have no problem eating a box of mac-n- cheese a couple more times a week instead of a Chipotle burrito if it means I can walk into a hospital and get treated.
Those who believe health care should remain private will feed you stories about long lines and month waits for doctor’s visits in England and Canada. To those individuals I say, ask someone with an HMO if he or she can get in to see a doctor for an annual checkup quickly. Regardless of your level of health coverage, slice your finger open, head down to the John Peter Smith emergency room on a Friday night and see how long it takes before you get stitches. Do this and tell me how guaranteeing health coverage will worsen our waits.
Maybe nationalizing the system is extreme. Maybe the answer is making all health care strictly nonprofit. Make it illegal to profit from the suffering of others unless you spend years in school learning how to treat the sick and injured. Bring to an end the days of executives and investors deciding who is deserving of treatment.
As it stands now, our system is severely flawed. If we are such slaves to bottom-line thinking that we are willing to sacrifice the individual on the altar of free enterprise, then maybe this nation is nowhere near as great as I so firmly believe.
Perhaps it is no more than another Rome, and efficiency is the fiddle our leaders play as it burns to the ground.
I believe that it is just a matter of time until everyone collectively agrees yet again: Efficiency be damned if it only results in suffering.
Managing editor Brian Chatman is a senior news-editorial major from Fort Worth.
