Will Universal Health Care Make Americans Healthy?

One of the great things about living in DC is you have the opportunity to go to talks on a random Monday afternoon about whatever subject you happen to be interested in. A friend of mine often sends me e-mails about events hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Today, they were hosting a talk about health care, with featured speaker Congressman John Dingell. Being interested in health care issues, I decided to attend to hear with the Congressman had to say.

The title of the presentation was "Long Time Coming: A Historical Look at Health Reform and Priorities for 2009." Congressman Dingell, who has been in Congress for over 50 years (which is a whole other issue, but that's for another day) has a long history with trying to reform the health care system while in Congress so I figured he would have some interesting things to say.

I had mixed reactions to the Congressman's talk. On one hand, I thought he did a good job summarizing how our health care system has come to be what it is today. I also thought that he did a good job explaining how a revised health care system could actually benefit the economy. He argues that American corporations will be able to compete better in the global economy if they do not have to factor in health care costs into the cost of their product. I thought that was a newer way of thinking about the benefits of changing our current health care system.

While listening to the Congressman talk was very interesting, I did leave the discussion a bit disappointed. I wish that he had talked more about what he feels the best way is to reform the system. He spoke of the two schools of thought (government health care versus single payer), but didn't really talk about what he felt would be the best system.

My other issue with the remarks is that too often we think of universal health care as the magic bullet to make people healthy. Congressman Dingell seemed to buy into this as well, as he did not mention any other initiatives he would support to improve the health of the American population. The reasoning is, if people have health insurance, they can get everything they need to be healthy. Sadly, this is not the case. Just because people have health insurance does not mean they will go to the doctor and get the care they need. We still need better education so that people know what they need to do to be healthy--paying special care to ensure that we are reaching the under-served, undereducated population that might not hear the general messages. There needs to be changes in urban planning so that we invest in communities so that they are healthy--building parks, tearing down unhealthy buildings, making sure there are grocery stores that sell healthy foods. We need to make sure that we control our food supply to make sure that it is safe and healthy. These, and more, are also factors in a healthy population. I can only hope that when universal health care comes into reality (as I hope it will), that we do not forget to do more to improve the health of the entire population.