SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
MLK's Vision and the Right to Healthcare
Jan 25, 2015
This past week the world celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Marches of remembrance also served as painful reminders of unhealed wounds along the lines of race in America, particularly the failure to realize equal access to health care for all.
In 1966, while addressing the second convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, King declared, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
The true magnitude of race-based health inequality is staggering: In his seminal paper "What If We Were Equal", Former Surgeon General, David Satcher calculated approximately 83,000 excess deaths per year among African Americans, also known as the "black-white mortality gap."
Despite progress in civil rights, housing, education, and employment from 1960 to 2000 this gap has remained. Shockingly, it has widened for infants and African American men over the age of 35.
The King holiday was a sobering day of reflection, but it was also the crescendo to the very audible justice movement loosely organized under the banner Black Lives Matter.
Activists marched in cities across the nation to bring attention to numerous highly publicized incidents of police violence. More broadly, organizers sought to underline the subversive elements of racism still deeply etched in our nation's subconscious, and no doubt represented in unequal health outcomes for African Americans.
As a nation, we do not provide universal access to even the most basic medical services. This is not likely to change anytime soon since the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 27 million people will remain uninsured after the full implementation of Obamacare.
The absence of universal health care coverage sets the U.S. apart from all other developed countries. It is the only member of the elite G7--a group of nations accounting for 66% of net global wealth--without universal health insurance for its citizens.
Dr. Satcher proposed national health insurance as the evidenced-based remedy to finally close the racial mortality gap and address persistent health injustice in America.
Polls show most Americans also support universal health care. In fact, the majority of physicians agree the private health insurance industry should be replaced with a streamlined, publicly accountable system, like "single-payer," also known as "improved Medicare for all."
What is single-payer? It simply means the government pays for health care costs without routing money through private insurers who manufacture paperwork, billing complexity and profits. This is how traditional Medicare insurance is able to operate with overhead costs of 2 percent, which is far more efficient than private health insurance plans, with overhead costs of 15 to 25 percent.
Harvard researchers recently calculated the administrative savings of single-payer's simplified financing structure to be $375 billion annually, nearly 15% of total health spending. This would help to lower the sky-high cost of our current system, which is approaching 18 percent of the gross domestic product.
Single-payer would free patients from out-of-pocket expenses, like co-payments and deductibles--proven barriers to care that are administratively unwieldy and unnecessary for cost containment.
National health insurance would also give patients free choice of providers without the narrow networks that are commonly encountered by insured Americans.
The comprehensive, high-quality care that is equitably accessible in a single-payer national health program stands in stark contrast to our current market-based system in which health care is rationed based on an individual's ability to pay.
The implications of ensuring a right to health care go well beyond medicine, because 'health' is of fundamental importance for the exercise and enjoyment of all other civil, political and economic rights. Dr. King envisioned a world of justice for all. In spite of this, preventable or treatable illnesses continue to needlessly compromise the liberty and dignity of countless Americans.
A right to health care is therefore instrumental for effective citizenship and promotes active participation by the greatest number of citizens in a more robust democratic process.
Equality--whether in health care or any other sphere--is not a "dream deferred," to quote Langston Hughes, but is attainable. We simply need the political will.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
This past week the world celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Marches of remembrance also served as painful reminders of unhealed wounds along the lines of race in America, particularly the failure to realize equal access to health care for all.
In 1966, while addressing the second convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, King declared, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
The true magnitude of race-based health inequality is staggering: In his seminal paper "What If We Were Equal", Former Surgeon General, David Satcher calculated approximately 83,000 excess deaths per year among African Americans, also known as the "black-white mortality gap."
Despite progress in civil rights, housing, education, and employment from 1960 to 2000 this gap has remained. Shockingly, it has widened for infants and African American men over the age of 35.
The King holiday was a sobering day of reflection, but it was also the crescendo to the very audible justice movement loosely organized under the banner Black Lives Matter.
Activists marched in cities across the nation to bring attention to numerous highly publicized incidents of police violence. More broadly, organizers sought to underline the subversive elements of racism still deeply etched in our nation's subconscious, and no doubt represented in unequal health outcomes for African Americans.
As a nation, we do not provide universal access to even the most basic medical services. This is not likely to change anytime soon since the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 27 million people will remain uninsured after the full implementation of Obamacare.
The absence of universal health care coverage sets the U.S. apart from all other developed countries. It is the only member of the elite G7--a group of nations accounting for 66% of net global wealth--without universal health insurance for its citizens.
Dr. Satcher proposed national health insurance as the evidenced-based remedy to finally close the racial mortality gap and address persistent health injustice in America.
Polls show most Americans also support universal health care. In fact, the majority of physicians agree the private health insurance industry should be replaced with a streamlined, publicly accountable system, like "single-payer," also known as "improved Medicare for all."
What is single-payer? It simply means the government pays for health care costs without routing money through private insurers who manufacture paperwork, billing complexity and profits. This is how traditional Medicare insurance is able to operate with overhead costs of 2 percent, which is far more efficient than private health insurance plans, with overhead costs of 15 to 25 percent.
Harvard researchers recently calculated the administrative savings of single-payer's simplified financing structure to be $375 billion annually, nearly 15% of total health spending. This would help to lower the sky-high cost of our current system, which is approaching 18 percent of the gross domestic product.
Single-payer would free patients from out-of-pocket expenses, like co-payments and deductibles--proven barriers to care that are administratively unwieldy and unnecessary for cost containment.
National health insurance would also give patients free choice of providers without the narrow networks that are commonly encountered by insured Americans.
The comprehensive, high-quality care that is equitably accessible in a single-payer national health program stands in stark contrast to our current market-based system in which health care is rationed based on an individual's ability to pay.
The implications of ensuring a right to health care go well beyond medicine, because 'health' is of fundamental importance for the exercise and enjoyment of all other civil, political and economic rights. Dr. King envisioned a world of justice for all. In spite of this, preventable or treatable illnesses continue to needlessly compromise the liberty and dignity of countless Americans.
A right to health care is therefore instrumental for effective citizenship and promotes active participation by the greatest number of citizens in a more robust democratic process.
Equality--whether in health care or any other sphere--is not a "dream deferred," to quote Langston Hughes, but is attainable. We simply need the political will.
This past week the world celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Marches of remembrance also served as painful reminders of unhealed wounds along the lines of race in America, particularly the failure to realize equal access to health care for all.
In 1966, while addressing the second convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, King declared, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
The true magnitude of race-based health inequality is staggering: In his seminal paper "What If We Were Equal", Former Surgeon General, David Satcher calculated approximately 83,000 excess deaths per year among African Americans, also known as the "black-white mortality gap."
Despite progress in civil rights, housing, education, and employment from 1960 to 2000 this gap has remained. Shockingly, it has widened for infants and African American men over the age of 35.
The King holiday was a sobering day of reflection, but it was also the crescendo to the very audible justice movement loosely organized under the banner Black Lives Matter.
Activists marched in cities across the nation to bring attention to numerous highly publicized incidents of police violence. More broadly, organizers sought to underline the subversive elements of racism still deeply etched in our nation's subconscious, and no doubt represented in unequal health outcomes for African Americans.
As a nation, we do not provide universal access to even the most basic medical services. This is not likely to change anytime soon since the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 27 million people will remain uninsured after the full implementation of Obamacare.
The absence of universal health care coverage sets the U.S. apart from all other developed countries. It is the only member of the elite G7--a group of nations accounting for 66% of net global wealth--without universal health insurance for its citizens.
Dr. Satcher proposed national health insurance as the evidenced-based remedy to finally close the racial mortality gap and address persistent health injustice in America.
Polls show most Americans also support universal health care. In fact, the majority of physicians agree the private health insurance industry should be replaced with a streamlined, publicly accountable system, like "single-payer," also known as "improved Medicare for all."
What is single-payer? It simply means the government pays for health care costs without routing money through private insurers who manufacture paperwork, billing complexity and profits. This is how traditional Medicare insurance is able to operate with overhead costs of 2 percent, which is far more efficient than private health insurance plans, with overhead costs of 15 to 25 percent.
Harvard researchers recently calculated the administrative savings of single-payer's simplified financing structure to be $375 billion annually, nearly 15% of total health spending. This would help to lower the sky-high cost of our current system, which is approaching 18 percent of the gross domestic product.
Single-payer would free patients from out-of-pocket expenses, like co-payments and deductibles--proven barriers to care that are administratively unwieldy and unnecessary for cost containment.
National health insurance would also give patients free choice of providers without the narrow networks that are commonly encountered by insured Americans.
The comprehensive, high-quality care that is equitably accessible in a single-payer national health program stands in stark contrast to our current market-based system in which health care is rationed based on an individual's ability to pay.
The implications of ensuring a right to health care go well beyond medicine, because 'health' is of fundamental importance for the exercise and enjoyment of all other civil, political and economic rights. Dr. King envisioned a world of justice for all. In spite of this, preventable or treatable illnesses continue to needlessly compromise the liberty and dignity of countless Americans.
A right to health care is therefore instrumental for effective citizenship and promotes active participation by the greatest number of citizens in a more robust democratic process.
Equality--whether in health care or any other sphere--is not a "dream deferred," to quote Langston Hughes, but is attainable. We simply need the political will.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.