I had a debate recently with a newly minted doctor about healthcare and healthcare insurance.  He was incredibly excited about the prospects for medical improvements due to research and the application of technology, sometimes called smart medicine.  It was his belief that these advancements will bring down the cost of healthcare over time as well as dramatically improve efficacy.  His argument is that capitalism in the healthcare markets allows for these advancements, and that a national healthcare system would certainly curtail these investments.   I was making the case for a government sponsored/payer system.  That insurance companies could compete to provide local or regional administration of healthcare, thereby ensuring some competition for renewable delivery contracts as is common in large federal contracting today.  I think there is room for both capitalism as well as socialism in healthcare.  Yes I know many will read socialism as a bad word, but truly health insurance has a good for society component.  Some element of basic care will always be guaranteed simply because to not do so would jeopardize the social fabric. There will always be individuals that will risk not having healthcare due to financial imperatives of the now that outweigh the future, and then they’ll show up at emergency rooms looking for care.  We cannot turn them away because our social constructs will not allow for it, we are not a people without compassion.   So it was my argument, that we have a certain basic health care that is guaranteed for by our federal government and that supplemental insurance that co-exists to provide a capitalism component.   Yes, it will be difficult to define what is “guaranteed” in healthcare, and what would be supplemental, but that is a healthy debate to have.  Healthcare insurance as someone recently said is complicated.  It seems to me that we need to set our priorities and then have the debates needed to arrive at a solution.  Our country has tackled complex problems successfully many times in the past.  Together, bridging the divides with vigorous debate is the way forward.  And to my young doctor friend, keep fighting to ensure that advancement in medicine will be part of the future!

The magazine website: www.words-matter.net will be presenting several articles in the coming weeks on health care, and I’ll be contributing.  Please give it look!