Dear Santa,
It’s time for my annual letter to you. Fresh from giving thanks for all the bounties of prosperity at Thanksgiving, I am compiling my wish list for more bounties. That is the schizoid nature of this season: gratitude followed by greed.
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But I’m unabashedly making my same old request: universal health insurance – a one-card system that gives every American access to our wonderful doctors and hospitals (thank you for the wonderful doctors and hospitals). European countries have this. I want it too.
I know. I know. I’ve asked you for this before. In 1935. In 1946. In 1950. In 1965. Eight years ago. And each time I semi-graciously acknowledged that the time wasn’t right. In 1935 Social Security was a big enough holiday gift – the greediest citizen couldn’t expect you to tack on health insurance too. In 1965 you gave us a partial gift – universal health insurance, but only for the disabled and elderly. Again, I’m grateful, but still want more. As for 1992, maybe the whole shebang – health insurance for everybody – was just too much to ask for. Greedy aspirants generally get coal in their stockings, don’t they? But it has been eight years, and I’m weighing back in with the same old same old.
This time you are my last recourse. I’ve given up on the new President – neither the Democratic nor the Republican candidate promised universal health insurance during their campaigns, and they promised lots of other goodies.
So, Santa, I’m bringing my cause to you.
I know that most Americans have dropped “health care” from their annual wish lists. In a post-voting poll, a sample of voters named their key desire (aside from character, which the pollsters took off the table). Only 11 percent put “health care” at the top of their wish list; and some of them are asking you for prescription drug coverage.
But the 43 million of us who lack insurance are a tenacious lot. In general, we haven’t been especially good or especially bad this year – certainly not bad enough to end up waiting in hospital emergency rooms, hoping on the one hand that we are sick enough for somebody to look at us, hoping on the other hand that we aren’t truly that sick. We don’t deserve our plight.
Santa, you have dropped “health care stuffers” into our holiday stockings in past years. We have COBRA, which lets us, or our families, buy insurance at our employer’s group rates if we leave the job.
Those stocking stuffers, though, don’t suffice. We still want the whole shebang – a “health insurance card,” like the Medicare card all Americans get when they reach age 65. You can take back COBRA, Medicaid, and the special programs for special populations. We won’t need them anymore.
Sincerely,
An Ever-Believing Virginia
(Joan “Virginia” Retsinas is former executive director of the Rhode Island
Health Care Policy and Planning Consortium. Her column appears frequently. “Virginia”
is the name of the little girl who wrote to the editor of the New York Sun many
years ago asking if there really was a Santa Claus.)
