Why we should have universal health care!

We should have universal health care to increase public health.

Many readers have health insurance, have a certain number of sick days, and generally stay home if we are sick.  About the only thing we will infect other people with are colds or flu.  We will stay home if we have the flu but not in the early stages when we think it is a cold.

But there are lots of people who have no health insurance and no sick days.  These are people who drag themselves to work to make sure their incomes stay steady.  They are the ones who can infect the rest of us on the bus or as restaurant servers or store clerks.

At a gym, many people clean off every surface they touch before and after using a machine.  But do they, or we, clean off every door handle, including on the lockers.  If we take a bus, do we clean off the seat before we sit down.  Do we wear masks in elevators, especially in a medical facility?

How many Typhoid Mary’s are out there serving us even when they know they are sick?

Universal health care will not eliminate all cases of passing an illness on, but it can certainly reduce our risk of catching a disease.

An argument for universal health care

"First, a civilized society compensates for the human propensity to screw up. That’s why we have single-payer firefighters and police officers. That’s why we require seat belts. When someone who has been speeding gets in a car accident, the 911 operator doesn’t sneer: 'You were irresponsible, so figure out your own way to the hospital' — and hang up."

Read the full story at "Scott's Story and the Elections", Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, 2012-10-17.

The rich create jobs, but rich in what?

As a response to "tax the rich", many say that the "rich create jobs".  Hm!  How many jobs has Paris Hilton created?  Certainly lots of jobs for paparazzi and tabloid writers.  How many real jobs have the Wall St. manipulators created?

Today's Star Tribune had an interesting article on how graduate students are being affected the jiggling of grants.  See "Debt deal nicks grad students, not others", Jenna Ross.

Given the cuts in Pell Grants, Congress in its great wisdom cut grants for graduate and professional students.  Some will say that students shouldn't get "charity".  But if we limited education only to those who could afford it, would we have enough educated people to do the innovation that we need to sustain our economy.

Abou Amara is president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly at the University of Minnesota.  He was quoted as saying, "There's a disconnect here.  The narrative now is about jobs and innovation.  Well, people in graduate and professional school are the people who are going to be creating jobs.  We're the people who are going to grow the economy."  See "If you want to grow, you have to spend money for seeds."

In the rush to avoid "taxing the rich" and "cutting spending", many ignored that they cut jobs with government shutdowns.  The rich hardly noticed, but many small businesses noticed.  For example, highway projects were shut down, the contractors laid off workers, and the contractors had shut-down costs that they may never get paid for.  The laid-off workers had be be paid unemployment benefits and some had to pay more for their health insurance.  Isn't this increased spending and taxing the middle class?

I've seen several articles recently about immigrants starting businesses, especially in the cities.  I don't know what portion of new, local businesses are created by immigrants, but I sense it is out of proportion to their numbers.  If so, why might this be?

Some of them took risks to be here, and so the risk of starting a business is just one more.  They are not accustomed to having health insurance and other benefits, and so they don't consider lack thereof as an impediment to starting a business.  Finally, they often have large networks of friends and relatives from whom to draw financial support.

I have two ideas that could encourage more people to start businesses.

The first is universal healthcare.  Too many consider this a cost rather than an investment.  If more people were freed of the need for a job with "benefits", wouldn't more people risk starting a business?  If more people started businesses, wouldn't there be more jobs?  If there were more jobs, wouldn't there be more taxes and less costs?

The second is more neighborhood banks.  Not only neighborhood in the sense of being located closer to the customers, but neighborhood in being staffed by people from the neighborhood.  With the larger banks, one can never be sure who will be in the locally-sited bank from one month to the next.  If the staff were more permanent, they would develop closer relations with their customers.

I know this certainly helped me in keeping a business growing.  I ran around the track at a YMCA with the president of a local bank.  Never mind that it was owned by Carl Pohlad, a Twin Cities billionaire, as part of a small empire of banks; the people were the same month after month and year after year.  Because the president got to know me and feel he could trust me, he extended a line of credit to me.  I drew on it, I paid it back, I drew on it, I paid it back.  I never really succeeded in the business, but how many others who had similar, local treatment succeeded.

Then Pohlad consolidated his banks under one brand, and the personality went out of the local bank.  He probably got even richer, but the community was poorer for it.

In summary, it's not the rich in dollars who create jobs; it's the rich in experience and education who create jobs.

One trillion dollars for health care sounds like a bargain

One trillion dollars over ten years for some health care proposals is claimed as an excessive cost by critics of those proposals. These same critics generally look on government spending as expenses without any return.

Consider that the U.S. spends over two trillion dollars each year and the rate is rising at over six percent per year. See "Health Care in the United States", Wikipedia. If a universal health care system costs one trillion over ten years, that sounds like quite an improvement of over twenty million for the same span of time.