The Ebola crisis has once again pointed out that
privatization of certain things in society has the potential for a disaster. This has
been a theme of this blog site since it started. I repeat, the government is there to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves
through the means of wealth distribution meaning taxes and salaries. I will
use several major areas as obvious examples of things that society needs done
but must not be done for profit, which include education, health care, and
prisons and then move to the more universally recognized areas of police and
militaries, and mail delivery. Privatize, privatize, privatize is the cry of
the Republican Party. Toward that end, they label privatization as ‘socialism’,
which it is, or use the more poignant invective, ‘communism’, which it is not.
The radical right wing media in their diatribes refer to those who support my
view (privatization is wrong for some things) as ‘liberal’, using both labels, ‘liberal’
and ‘socialism’, as dirty words.
The question at issue here is, has privatization of health
care, specifically hospitals, hurt or helped efforts of the medical community
to control the potential Ebola out break in the United States. Perhaps, the
current discussion of Affordable Health Care (ACA) overshadows this issue. Of course,
the ACA is aimed at individuals but was enacted by Congress and President Obama
as an awkward hybridized version of privatization of health cares in response to
the privatization issue; allow insurance companies to make money and poor people
can have health care insurance even if they cannot afford it. The ACA effected
hospital income secondarily. Greedy hospital administrators had learned how to
shovel taxpayer dollars into there profit column thought exaggerated charges
for emergency room care—charging thousands of dollars per hour etc. They blamed
the federal law that says emergency room medical staff must treat everyone who
presents to an emergency room and most people did not have insurance because
they could not afford it. We all know medical costs were spiraling upward essentially
out of control. ACA dramatically shifted this burden to insurance companies
because all individuals should have affordable health insurance while spectacularly
lowering the rate of increase of health care costs. This whole picture affords
a stark example of what happens when we privatize of emergency room care.
More to the point, people are calling for every hospital to
have top-notch isolation facilities and personal protective devices and protective
clothing for all staff in anticipation of receiving suspected Ebola patients;
this is ridiculous yet we need such hospital regionally. Most hospital
administrators “candidly” refuse to do that because of great costs, which would
cut into profits but will not admit to their greed based actions. In contrast,
all health care works demand protective clothing, protocols, etc. Nursing
unions do this where Republicans have not destroyed such unions. Hospital administrators
who would comply rightfully expect the government to pay them with tax dollars.
To have a system of government hospitals would be out and out socialisms in the
eyes of Republicans; the only place socialism is acceptable to Republicans is
the Veterans Administration; then “liberals” cannot give them enough money and
support.
In summary, it is foolish to expect “every” hospital to pay
for such things. We need a government hospital system nationwide like the Veterans
Administration but for everyone. That much needed system will never happen with
a Republican controlled government. It obviously would save taxpayers great amounts
of money and provide peace of mind across the nation, especially during this era
of resurgence of childhood disease, AIDS epidemic, and Ebola crisis, but has a
down side, which is the greed of
individually owned and privately held hospital corporations; they would
have competition. The Republican House of Representatives, as part of their
campaign to destroy the government, has underfunded the CDC among many, many
other things they have underfunded so who or what is there to do what “we can
not do for ourselves”. In health care, it is to identify infectious disease cases,
control treatments, and management, in addition to identifying and controlling
movement of travelers from suspected “hot spots”. Should we bother to mention
educate our children (now in crisis) and hold prisoners, police our neighborhoods, and protect
our shores?
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