On health care, whose side are Coons and Carper on? (Delaware Voices)

RE Vanella

I read with great disappointment the op-ed written by Sen. Chris Coons regarding his proposals to repair the U.S. health care system now that the latest round of radical Republican schemes have been foiled. Senator Coons makes it a point to state that both his own opposition to the recent Republican bills “was not rooted in partisanship,” and that partisan discourse “won’t get us anywhere.”

He even throws in the obligatory shout-outs to GOP Senators Marco Rubio and John McCain in case anyone was slow on the pickup. Some form of the word "bipartisan" is used four times.

I’d argue that partisanship simply means actually standing up for a side.

Read Coons' op-ed:A bipartisan prescription for fixing the Affordable Care Act

Coons declares that the problem with rising health costs is the “lack of a competitive marketplace.” To address this price issue, the bill he is sponsoring “incentivizes insurance companies” to remain in markets which only have one dominant insurer. Further, the proposed legislation would “encourage other insurers to come into the marketplace and provide more competition.”

I think Senator Coons is taking a side. I challenge readers to decide whether he’s taken theirs.

Every other modern democracy has solved this problem. Any reader of the local newspaper knows this so I won’t waste too much space. Government subsidized single-payer health care plans work. This is a fact.

They are the most efficient, cheapest systems that also happen to get the very best outcomes. There are measurements for such things.

The numbers are in and the markets are producing the wrong answer. Which figures should I cite?

The countries that provide health care to everyone are democracies with capitalist economies. How many should I list?

I suggest that Coons’ plan as presented is not on our side. He claims the bipartisan fix will make sure that U.S.-based expatriate insurance firms can compete “on a level playing field with their foreign competitors.” This is framed in the context of an estimate of Delaware jobs of course.

The number was 500 exactly and perhaps that estimate is true. But does all this strike you as something that will improve access to and the cost of neonatal care for your wife or cancer screening for your neighbor?

Capitalism produces profit first and always. It must. My contention is that the profit motive, while quite handy for some systems, has failed clearly and abjectly to provide the basic health services due to every human being. Only the obstinate ideologue can ignore this fact or pretend to ignore it.

Coons put forward small tweaks and tinkers to the market of medicine, but depending on any system for which the main object is accumulating money is what won’t get us anywhere. Continuing to contort a system already twisted tightly into a Gordian knot is what is unproductive.

Now is the time to pick a side. There is enormous wealth in this country due to this system. A surprising percentage of it is actually parked as terabytes on the computers of Wilmington attorneys who assist in the licensing of legally hidden LLCs, but that’s a discussion for a different day.

Everyone is entitled to fair and decent health care. We are all human beings. Health outcomes cannot be judged the way we determine who makes the slimmest mobile phone, the tastiest burger, the quickest taxi or the cutest shoes.

This is different because it’s us. We are not a thing.

Interestingly, in the same edition the News Journal, I ran past a brief AP wire report announcing Senator Thomas Carper will run again for the U.S. Senate. I learned that rather than retire as he had originally planned, the newly elected administration has inspired him to sign on for a fourth term.

Carper is a co-sponsor of the same bill his Delaware colleague described.

I wonder if a candidate who took a real stand for working people and advocated for the health care solution to which the rest of the developed world has successfully implemented mount a significant challenge to Carper? Has any corporate “New Democrat” faced a real primary brawl lately?

This being Delaware politics, I suspect the result is a fait accompli. Regardless, I think that would really be something. It would settle the argument about what tactic is more politically productive anyway.

RE Vanella is a lifelong Delaware resident and a University of Delaware alumnus. He lives in the Forty Acres neighborhood in Wilmington with his wife.