What Obama and Clinton should explicitly and loudly advocate is a constitutional amendment that makes universal health care a nonnegotiable right of all Americans.
Why has no member of Congress submitted legislation to get Congress to propose such an amendment for ratification by the states? Clearly, the only rational answer is that the many business interests that have corrupted Congress and that benefit from the current system have prevented proposal of such an amendment.
Article V of the Constitution provides only one alternative to Congress proposing amendments. That option has never been used in the entire history of the US. The Article V convention option was put in the Constitution because the Founders and Framers believed that one day, Americans would lose trust and confidence in the federal government. With 81 percent of Americans believing the nation is on the wrong track, and with so many millions of Americans lacking good health insurance and care, that day has surely arrived. With abysmally low levels of confidence in Congress and the president, an Article V convention – a temporary fourth branch of the federal government – is clearly the right path to obtaining a universal health care amendment. A convention of state delegates could debate such an amendment, and if they agreed to propose it, then the standard ratification by three-quarters of the states would still be necessary.
Yes, this would probably take a few years. But it would be worth it. The prospect of Congress, even with Clinton or Obama as president, achieving true universal health care without loopholes benefiting various business sectors faster than the amendment approach is not good. The process of pursuing such an amendment, moreover, would help keep pressure on Congress to do the right thing.
If this sounds reasonable and necessary, then learn the truth about the Article V option at Friends of the Article V Convention and start talking up a universal health care amendment.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
Why stop at "affordable healthcare?" If it's a right, shouldn't it be free? We don't pay for our speech or assembly rights, do we?
In fact, why not build a health system like the VA's, wherein the government not only owns the hospitals, but all the medical personnel are government employees.
Then, nationalize the pharma industry, and we're all set.
2 - Zedd
Clavos,
You are stating things as if there is a universal principle that would make your pseudo suggestion unthinkable.
Try again.
3 - Clavos
Huh??
4 - Dave Nalle
Wow, is there nothing Joel won't consider to junk up the Constitution?
Dave
5 - Sir Andrew
Your idea, sir, is exactly the reason why the founding fathers made it difficult to create an amendment.
6 - Matthew T. Sussman
Know what I want? Universal punch and pie.
7 - Marion Barry
Universal crack and hookers?
Dave
8 - Matt
Did you see the Bunk study stating 2/3 of doctors in America want National Health Care. The doctors who did this study also conducted one in 2002 and found that the majority of doctors did not want national health care, the problem with this is that the 2 question surveys drastically differ in there 2nd question. I found this article, 60% of Physicians Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan, It's worth a read.
9 - STM
There's no reason why Americans can't have great universal health care.
The single-payer system, however, doesn't seem to work that well without private input. It seems to lead to an enormous bureacracy, and in a country of 300 million, do you really need that?
There's a compromise: a government single-payer system that covers the bulk of medical expenses for every citizen, with no need to have private insurance, but with complementary private care and a corresponding tax break for those who choose that option, which also relieves the burden somewhat on the government and maintains a large number of private-sector jobs and health care options.
That's the kind of option that sees a private patient in a private room in a public hospital, with doctors/specialists of their choice, and no waiting lists. It also ups the ante somewhat on the level of care provided to patients who are choosing the full public option, because while they can't choose their doctors or a private room, they will still often get the same doctors and certainly the same excellent facilities.
You need a combination private/public system that can be accessed by everyone and that gives a level of universal public care (and cover) way above what is currently offered in the US.
The wallet triage has no place in any medical system - but neither does a giant, unwieldy buracracy of the kind experienced in places like Britain and Canada.
Embrace the compromise. It works, and it works well.
Yes, it's still two-tier, but it does share the love around a bit better without taking that one important thing away: choice.
It's worth mentioning too that the system above, when first introduced, led to the samwe kind of fear, wailing and gnashing of teeth now seen in America.
It took 20 years to work the bugs out of it, and the US doesn't need to repeat the same mistakes if it draws on the experience of others who've cocked it up royally, and those who haven't.
It's so popular now, no government would be stupid enough to dismantle it.
Which just goes to show: contempt based on lack of knowledge or experience, and prior to investigation, can lead to serious misconceptions.
10 - Arch Conservative
"Wow, is there nothing Joel won't consider to junk up the Constitution?"
Apparently not.
11 - troll
(#7 - slippery slope alert
before we know it Marion will be recalling Vox - I miss that man of mystery - from his present posting at the University of Padua)
12 - Dan Miller
Joel,
Great idea! Absolutely Great!
But why stop there? While we are setting about to amend the Constitution to include Universal Health Care, how about including some other neat stuff, which everybody needs as well:
Universal Food Care;
Universal Clothing Care;
Universal Adequate Housing;
Universal Home Heating (and Cooling) Care;
Universal Fuel at $0.28 per gallon, adjusted according to the same inflation standard as Social Security
Universal Superior Education;
Universal Employment for All who Ask for It.
Oh, Yeah. I almost forgot: Mandatory Universal Education to Eliminate what minor vestiges of Self-Reliance and Personal Responsibility remain.
Utopia, here we come! Sound the Bugles! Sound the Trumpets (opps, I forgot to include Universal Music Education).
Dan
13 - troll
...I'll bring the fairy dust
14 - Clavos
Dead on, Dan...
15 - Dan Miller
Thanks, Troll
However, fairy dust is one thing of which we already have a more than copious supply. I come not to praise fairy dust, but to bury it.
Dan
16 - Joel S. Hirschhorn
From the mostly insipid comments posted here - clearly by people not suffering from no or suboptimal health insurance - we have still more evidence of the massive degree of stupidity and lack of concern for our fellow citizens that this website seems to attract.
By the way, we have in the good old USA a fine example of a single payer health insurance system: Medicare. And for your information, the administrative costs in Medicare are a small fraction of the administrative costs of the whole private medical insurance industry. So we have proof positive that converting over to a single payer government system (that in no way makes the government a provider of medical services)would save billions of dollars nationally. More to the point, the US has abysmal health results compared to nations with single payer universal health care and worse yet our per capita costs are enormously higher. In other words, mental midgets favoring this website: the current US medical insurance/delivery system (outside of Medicare)makes tons of money for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, while providing terrible health coverage for Americans.
17 - Dave Nalle
Dan, you forgot Universal Pet Care. I'd love to have that when I go on vacation. Hey, and maybe the government could take over all those worthless timeshares people bought and apportion vacation space based on need.
Joel, the reason you get insipid and flippand comments is that no one takes your article seriously - for good reason.
Dave
18 - Andy Marsh
You want cheap health care...earn it! Make the military a career and you get health care for you and your family for $460 a year.
Gimme gimme gimme! Fuck you! Gimme!
19 - Baronius
Meow, Joel.
You wanted to know if any sensible, caring people could possibly disagree with you. Here we are.
20 - Alessandro
I'm just pouring on the for the sake of it.
#12: Hehe.
Um, my turn. I want Universal Parenting. I mean, no one seems interested in raising kids anymore, right? Right. Let the government raise our kids!
Who's with me? Let them deal with the bad grades our kids get.
Me? I'm heading to bumper cars.
21 - Alessandro
"...to the bumper cars." Sheesh. I want a Universal Editor too.
22 - Clavos
Joel thinks the government that brought you the Katrina aftermath, the Iraq and Vietnam wars, Walter Reed Hospital, the weeks of warnings we had about 9-11 before it happened, bridges falling down, and children who are graduated from high school unable to read or write, that government is going to keep us all healthy, provide us all the medical care we need, and do it efficiently???? HA! In a pig's eye!
as published in their manuals, and figured out that a bill for $2500 should only have been for $75 or $80. And Medicare has acknowledged their errors and accepted my figures.
You and bliffle keep repeating the same lame figures (produced, no doubt, by Medicare itself)that "prove" Medicare is more efficient than the private sector.
I call bullshit, and I speak from 2 1/2 years experience as a Medicare consumer. This "efficient" Medicare paid twice as much for my wife's wheelchair as the manufacturer charges for it on its website; PLUS, it took Medicare three months to get it delivered, whereas the manufacturer told me they could get it to me in a week. When i suggested to Medicare that we save the taxpayers money and buy the chair my way, I was told, "No, we only buy through authorized suppliers." (Read: the suppliers who "greased the wheels").
You guys talk about Medicare's "low overhead," as reflected in those mysterious figures; sure, Medicare's own overhead is low; they don't do anything except shuffle papers, and even much of that is farmed out to the very same medical insurers you so despise. Medicare's error rates in billing are awesome; more than once I've received bills in the thousands of $$$$s, reviewed and analyzed them
Medicare is continuously and egregiously ripped off by doctors, hospitals, nursing and rehabilitation centers, and most especially, by durable medical supplies providers. None of these ripoffs enter into the calculations of Medicare's "overhead," because they are not accounted for as part of Medicare's overhead; they are the costs of patient care, not Medicare's "overhead."
In South Florida alone, tens of millions of dollars are ripped off from Medicare; just the local busts reported in the papers on an annual basis are in the millions of dollars, and that's just the miscreants who are caught.
I'm not against everyone being covered by medical insurance; I AM against the government handling it without strict civilian, non-government oversight, and I am against civil servants who cannot be fired being in charge of it.
But most of all, what scares me the worst as a taxpayer is that responsibility for it might be handed over to Medicare.
Woe betide us all if that happens.
23 - Baronius
Clavos, let's pretend that you're wrong, and Medicare is the gold standard of efficiency. What happens to health care prices the day that Medicare says it's going to pay all the bills?
And what happens the next day, when Medicare decides prices are too high? What will happen to health care availability when the government starts "negotiating" prices?
I caught a little bit of Governor Jindal on C-SPAN today. He was talking about the recovery after Katrina. He told the story about one sheriff who lost his department's vehicles in the storm. He put in a call to Ford, and received donated trucks that same day. He's still waiting for the vehicles promised by the federal government.
Of course Medicare isn't efficient. It can't be. But even if it were, it's not equipped to manage the nation's health care market.
24 - Dan Miller
Dave and Alessandro
Yeah. That too. Let's come up with a comprehensive list of gimmes, so that when the Constitutional Convention is held we won't have to do it again soon.
As to the astute author of the article, who says
Pile it on.
Dan
25 - Staci Schoff
Joel, you're pretty much SOL if you don't even think Clinton's health care proposal goes far enough. It's already too radical to ever happen. I agree with you that we need health care reform, but amending the constitution? Don't waste your energy fantasizing about it.
I'm happy at this point to work on changing the coverage/employment link so that people are not dependent on a particular employer for their health insurance. There has to be a better way, but handing it all to the government isn't going to be the answer either -- anything the government can do, pretty much anyone else can do more efficiently.