By Count Friedrich von Olsen
As the disclaimer at the top of this column proclaims, I have a European background. I am also, of course, now an American, as red, white and blue as anyone. I am also a Republican and it had become fashionable among us in the Grand Old Party to be critical, perhaps even overly critical, of recently departed President Barack Obama with regard to the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, it was de rigueur to refer to it as “Obamacare,” a sly putdown I was not myself inclined to engage in. You see, in those places on the Continent where I spent the better part of one-third of my life, something akin to universal health care has long existed. It did not exist as a right, but yet it existed. I am a Republican, indeed a rabid Republican, one might say. Still, I could never quite bring myself to inveigh against Barack Obama over what stood, still stands, and will most likely ever stand as his one decent accomplishment. And now that we Republicans are in control, we, or some of us, are learning that creating and maintaining a health care system that is beneficial to everyone is not that easy of a task…
I hesitate to the use the term “right” when speaking about access to health care. But I believe, as a matter of principle, that it is in our common interest that we have a healthy society all the way around, both generally and at the level of every individual citizen. I begrudge no one his or her health. In fact, I think every one of us has a selfish interest in living among others who are healthy. Others being sick does me no good, nor does it help anyone else…
If Barack Obama is to be faulted for the effort to achieve universal health care it lies not in what he did but rather in some of the ramifications of how he did it. I think a case can be made that in trying to create a national health system he was too accommodating of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. I do not begrudge those entities their ability – again I will not use the term “right’ – to derive a profit. In fact, I want them to profit so they have an incentive to provide that element of the system they are responsible for so the whole system will work. Yet, at the same time, I do not believe that at its basis the system exists just so they can profit. Those entities achieving a profit is not the raison d’être or the sine qua non of the health care system. Those entities should be allowed to participate, and profit, to the extent that they contribute toward the system functioning and succeeding. If at any point their profit taking interferes with the overarching goal, they have lost – and again I will not use the term “right” – the ability to participate in the system as it should be set up…
I will offer this: I think the way President Obama’s system, and any follow-on system, could best achieve its goals of promoting universal health care is to simply up the supply of the ingredient critical to health care, that being doctors. Let me make a hyperbolic illustration, one not to be taken literally but which illustrates my point. If doctors were as plentiful as auto mechanics, then a heart transplant would not cost too much more than getting a new transmission. I believe we could end whatever health care crisis can be said to exist with one simple stratagem: double the number of medical students being admitted annually into our nation’s medical schools. Of course those benefits would not kick in until six years down the road, but when they do, the change will be enormous…