Health Care As A Family Value | Health and Fitness

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Instead of bloviate about the potential outcome of the health care reform decision by?the Supreme Court on Thursday, I would like to move us through a step we missed when we originally embarked on changing health care in 2010.? As a country, we never answered the important question, ?Should everyone have at least basic health care in this country and how much do we want to pay?? I think by the end of this post, you may consider basic health care as a necessary component of strong family values, equal rights for women, and even more strangely, equal rights for men.

First, a definition of basic health care.? Basic health care is not the same as the unlimited health care we expect for all of our ills today.? Basic health care is enough to keep us healthy, appropriately alive, and productive in society.? Preventive medicine, care for acute illness, and early treatment of common chronic disease are examples of basic care that would be very inexpensive and easy to provide without the need for getting insurance involved.

We currently pay $7,960 per person per year for health care in this country.? Taxpayers pay $3,660 of that bill.? In many countries, good health care is provided to everyone for less money than what taxpayers alone pay per person in this country for health care.? If we could provide at least basic health care to everyone in this country for less than what taxpayers pay today, should we do it?? And free market advocates, keep in mind we can have a secondary free market system paid for with private dollars in addition to a basic system.

So how is basic health care a component of strong family values?

Health insurance tied to employment started in the 1940?s as companies competed for a dearth of workers.? Offering health plans was a great way to get around wage controls during WWII.? In 1954, the institution of employer-provided health insurance was cemented when the IRS deemed employer contributions for health insurance exempt from taxable income.? The relationship flourished through the years.

Of course, to receive health care benefits, we have to work full time. In the 1950?s women were expected to stay at home and men worked the full time job to secure a paycheck and health care benefits for the family.? As we all know, this inherently put women in a one-down situation ? no job, no benefits, no skills and at the mercy of her husband?s character.? The man was the one-up, so he always had choices.

Men were shortchanged too. They had the burden of being the only breadwinner. Rarely did they get to see their child take a first step. The stress of the ?man-lifestyle? was and still is mostly unspoken, and the result is an unhealthier lifestyle that leads to earlier deaths.

Through the work of many women and men, women have made headway in their place in the world, but unfortunately still have a significant one-down situation. Women now have the same lifestyle as men in terms of work pace, and most have the additional responsibility of taking care of their children and their home. We are still in the process of educating men on the impossible sustainability of this model.? Men are gradually stepping up in child care duties, but many have difficulty leaving the mores of the ?man-lifestyle? behind.

And who really takes the brunt of this social model? ?The children. Plain and simple. We need to be there for our children as life education doesn?t happen through osmosis.

So where do health care and family values tie together?

Think of the flexibility if health care is no longer tied to employment:

• If they can live within their means, parents could each work three to four days a week and have more time with their children.
• Both men and women would have equal time to take care of their physical and mental health.
• Entrepreneurship would flourish. Families would have an easier time starting small businesses.
• Small and large employers would no longer have the burden of managing health care benefits for their employees.
• The current fight of whether women can have it all or not can be settled. And better yet, men can have it all too.

If the Supreme Court upholds the entire law, the health insurance exchange will erode the need for employer based coverage. This is good. If the Supreme Court strikes down the entire law, who knows where we will go next? Hopefully good sense rules and ideology is left behind as we come up with the next solution.

As opined by many, if the Supreme Court upholds the law and strikes down only the individual mandate, the good parts of the law will stay intact.? We will be given the opportunity to start again on how we provide health care coverage in this country, and hopefully we will approach it more intelligently.? Those who believe in strong family values should take a stand and demand we create a system that provides a base of good care for everyone. Our country will be stronger, productive, resilient, and healthier as a result.

Questions, comments, suggestions? Post here, or reach me on Twitter @CarolynMcC, or at Carolyn.mcclanahan@gmail.com.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynmcclanahan/2012/06/26/health-care-as-a-family-value/

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