Demo-Republican Congressional Health Care Debate Disregards the Poor and Veterans

U.S. veterans and the poor typically receive less than excellent medical care in the United States. Underfunding adequate medical care for the working poor and veterans prevent the poor and veterans from having good health for work in addition to sustaining pain and endangering their lives. It would be practical for the congress to create a unified national, public health care service exclusively for poor U.S. citizens, legal residents and veterans and leave them out of the ongoing health care debates of the wealthy, the middle class and corporation providing health care and/or insurance coverage.

Quality health care for the poor is not a luxury. Not yet age 60 I had to give up my home building lot to pay for hernia surgical repair incurred from an on the job roofing injury while self-employed. Obviously I had no insurance or worker’s compensation coverage. In a real world entrepreneurial contract laboring market to be able to afford bread, bike tires and notebook computers if not building materials, injuries happen. Risk is an implicit part of survival enterprise the comfortably corporate or government employed do not experience or comprehend. Neither do the working poor entrepreneurs have the established opportunity to bargain for good prices for work such as established, licensed contractors have.

There are innumerable ways the poor may incur uncovered, uninsured injuries. It is not realistic to expect the public to pay for a lifetime of insurance for the poor who may only have one or two injuries before reaching Medicare eligibility age. What would be useful would be the creation of a national referral and hospital system for the poor and for veterans able to treat at no cost common injuries and illnesses for the poor and complete coverage for veterans with any days of national service.

Citizens who have untreated substantive injuries and illnesses will need to collect food stamps, welfare, or some other forms of social sustenance if they cannot work. Citizens who are not productive because of ill health are not an economic theory but a national fact costly to the public and economically inefficient. The practical remedy is to repair these injuries and illnesses and return citizens to the eligible work force.

With a combined citizen-veterans worker’s comp like referral/screening and medical treatment program costs only as needed are required without perennial insurance deficits. The existence of a medical infrastructure capable of treating large numbers of veterans if needed in a future casualty intensive conflict would also create better preparedness for national emergency.

The wealthy and middle class may well haggle about neo-social, neo-corporatist national medical insurance policies. Neither the U.S. poor nor veterans benefit much from such inefficient and cost-redundant structures, yet the Congress doesn’t really understand why, and do not seem to care much if the nation ditches pragmatic and efficient medical service to create a healthier America and U.S. economy.