Side effects of anti-health-care-reform movement

There can be no doubt that the whole discussion on health care has polarized opinion, created myths, allowed radicals to advance their voice (if not intelligence) and, in some cases, exposed crooked politicians with their hands out. And, as we all know, it has stirred up facts, figures and opinion. Sometimes, emerging from that turbulence are some very interesting facts indeed.

The National Health System in Great Britain has been held up as an example not to follow by most of the naysayers. Since the administration has no intention of proposing a public health-care system, the naysayers’ argument against America taking this “socialist†road always seems like a red herring. However, what smells like a fish may be seeking to hide some real facts that may be worth a second look.

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The CIA publishes “World Factbook,†an annual book to help American business. In it, the United States is ranked 41st in the world for infant mortality and only 46th for life expectancy. Among the OECD countries (the 20 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the United States is ranked third-to-last for health care for women (Mexico is better) and fifth-to-last for men (Slovakia is better). Seems our “best health-care system in the world,†as one senator called it, is not all that good.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) in Washington, 16.2 percent of our nation’s gross domestic product goes into health care. That’s $1 in every $6 spent inside the United States! And our health-care system currently needs 13,666,300 employees to cope. With about 154,000,000 people employable in the United States, that means that 1 in every 11 people works in health care.

The professional and business sector shed 1.5 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, transportation and warehousing lost 22,000 more jobs in July, and financial services lost 501,000 jobs since November. But in the same period of time, health care has continued to expand. By how much? Well, the industry picked up 20,000 jobs per month. That’s already 140,000 this year, so far.

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And, comparing us to the United Kingdom (and that “socialized mess the Brits call health care†as another senator put it) doesn’t work so well, either. The NHS (National Health System) has about 1,370,000 people working in it, consuming 9.8 percent of the U.K. gross domestic product. That means they have half the number of people working in health care as we do.

And, remember, they are way above the United States on the CIA’s and OECD’s lists for looking after men, women and children. So when you hear about random cases of the failure of that system from naysayers, try and get a perspective on how much less the U.K. taxpayer is spending compared to us.

Just in case you thought this could not get more complicated, there is an interesting piece of news coming out of organized unions: They are angry at the lies and antisocial back-peddling being bandied about in Washington. In fact, the U.S. unions are so mad, they’ve taken the examples being touted by naysayer senators about the “horrible socialist medicine in the U.K.†and discussed them with their more powerful counterparts in the U.K.

The result? Unite. The U.K.’s biggest union and the USW, the largest private sector union in the United States and Canada, have teamed up to fight back for health-care reform and the cessation of lies.

What have the naysayers done? They have provoked an agreement creating the first global union in association with the AFL-CIO. In particular, the new global union will “fight the casualization of employment and reductions in pay and conditions for millions of working people in North America and Europe.†Oh, good. Well done, naysayers.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.