The national debate on health insurance and the looming swine flu epidemic are rarely discussed in the same conversation, even though we’ve all been talking a lot about both.
But the New England Journal of Medicine carried an interesting article in its August 27 issue. In it, Dr. Nicole Lurie, who has since been named assistant secretary for preparedness and response for the Department of Health and Human Services, writes about “H1N1 Influenza Health Preparedness and Health Care Reform.”
Her message, with evidence from the recent Hurricane Katrina, is that “people who are vulnerable because they are poor or have underlying health conditions suffer disproportionately in nearly all emergencies.”
And she notes that countries with universal health care obtain information more quickly regarding immunizations of patients, for example. In the U.S.A., some calculate that as many as 71 million people are uninsured or underinsured.
So we stand at the crossroads just at the cusp of an epidemic. As the song goes, “We’d live the life we choose.”
Most of us think about health insurance from the point of its expense, and whether we can afford to subsidize, through our taxes, health care for the poor. We should also be asking ourselves how we will be affected if they don’t get the care they need.
Will the epidemic spread faster? Will things shut down? Will nations that do have universal health care outperform us? These are questions we need to ponder.
What are the costs of having universal health care, and what are the costs of not having universal health care?