Policy Casualty
5 November 2008 | 2:51 PM
Like any good bedwetting, tree-humping liberal, one of the things I think should be a primary legislative and executive priority for the new president and congress is a sustainable and progressive approach to providing health care and insurance to everyone in this country. Usually, when I picture an ideal situation, I think of systems like Germany’s or Denmark’s, where health care is nationalized, bought and paid for by taxes on citizens and businesses. I’m no policy wonk on the subject, but I’ve done some reading on it. Sure, there are some drawbacks to the nationalized systems seen in Europe: cost controls mean that physicians’ salaries are capped fairly low, leading many to emigrate or abandon the profession in the pursuit of better money, and the availability of some procedures or treatments can sometimes be a bit sketchy. Still, though, it’s a model I often envision as being workable, or at least possibly adaptable to our current, market-driven approach. However, one of the things that rarely gets mentioned in these sorts of discussions is the place where immigration policy and national health care policy intersect. As this recent story out of Australia illustrates, a possible side-effect of so-called “socialized medicine” is that people’s health (and, even scarier, their disabilities) can be used as a screening criteria for how immigrants can successfully achieve citizenship.
Now, admittedly this particular instance hits close to home for me, given the role that Down syndrome plays in the story, but it does make me wonder a bit. As it stands now, Canada and many other countries with nationalized health care won’t allow people to gain residency if they have HIV or are too old. While i can certainly see the reasons behind the policy, I think it’s tinkering it with a fundamentally American ideal. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants. This is the place people come to start a new life, to chase a dream that they otherwise couldn’t. A place where opportunity abounds. Now we’re supposed to add a parenthetical to that? Something like, “(as long as you’re not sick, different or elderly)”? That seems intrinsically at odds with what I see as our core values, and what the likely intent of any American nationalized health system might be.
Maybe I’m way off the mark. I just wonder how to reconcile the grim realities of paying for a nationalized health system with what’s written on the plaque inside the Statue of Liberty.
Posted by Andy in Food For Thought