Insurance 101

Today, without his usual egotistical photo op, George W. Bush vetoed a rare bipartisan Congressional bill that would have extended health care benefits to millions of children in America. Bush easily realized that posing for pictures with a sick child without medical coverage and with the parents who will be bankrupted by having to pay the medical expenses would not be good for the Bush “legacy”.

Drawing on the cold war era specter of the communist menace, Bush called the measure another step toward “socialized medicine”. Bush also said the government should not extend to middle class children health care protections intended only for poor children. This is the same middle class that Bush fooled into supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthy, by telling them they too would receive a tax break. Now the middle class realizes the annual tax break they got is not enough to pay for even one month’s medical insurance, and Bush is protecting the wealth of the rich from the menace of "socialism" at the expense of middle class families.

In the first year of law school I learned how the medieval legal system saw that risks such as a house fire could result in a loss not only for the initial victim, but also for the neighbors to whose homes the fire spread. Suing the initial victim was ineffective, since the losses to all the neighbors would exceed the ability of the first homeowner to pay. Legal minds then realized that the solution to this problem was to spread the risk of fire loss throughout the community - and thus the concept insurance was born.

Everyone agrees the solution to paying for health care is insurance. Health problems,like fire, can strike anyone. Insurance spreads the risk of paying for individual health problems among the greater population. All insureds are protected against medical expense and are pleased to know we are all helping each other by pooling our resources. In virtually all the rest of the world, this most fundamental risk, the expense of a health problem, is efficiently insured against through a universal single payer system, provided by the best manifestation of the community will, the national government. But in America, because of the outdated red scare, and because of the political money spent by special interests who make huge sums on the present system, our simple attempt to spread the risk like the rest of the world, is blocked.

Congress can override a Bush veto if 15 more House Republicans change their vote. If not,once a Democrat is in the White House, this legislation can be passed again and signed by the new President, much like Bill Clinton did for the family medical leave act that the first Bush had vetoed. To the Bush family, protecting family values means protecting the valuable wealth of their rich crony families, but does not mean helping all the rest of the American families meet their health care needs.