Let’s start by putting this in perspective. The U.S. Census Bureau said that 45.7 million of Americans had no health insurance in 2007 (roughly 15.8% of the total population, 18% of the population under the age of 65). Of those uninsured Americans, 8.1 million were children (roughly 10% of the population of children in the U.S.).

Let’s just talk about the children for a moment then. It’s not too long in the news cycle before you hear someone spouting off something along the lines of “Won’t someone think of the children” when championing their cause of the day. I won’t get into those causes quite yet, but let’s take their advice and think of the children.

According to the Population Reference Bureau 2008 report, The United States is 47th on the Infant Mortality Rate list boasting a 6.6 deaths / 1000 live births. This list does not include still birth data. Of the Developed Nations list from the IMF, the U.S. is dead last. I am not joking. The closest in the running is Slovakia at 6.1. Our favourite “Socialist” Healthcare punching bag, Canada, is currently running at 5.4 and the other “Shockingly Socialist” Healthcare, the U.K. is enjoying themselves at 4.9. The U.S. slipped from the 2006 report, ranking 33rd at 6.3. It seems to be that the situation is getting worse in the U.S. and better for everyone else.

The U.S. is very outspoken on each side of the abortion debate. Pro-life (anti-choice) supporters are in favour of, in its strongest form, making all abortions illegal because they believe that the feotus is a human life and must be preserved. The pro-choice (anti-life / pro-abortion) believe that a woman has the right to make her own decisions on her reproductive health and we should make it as safe as possible. (I’m over-simplifying, I know, but bear with). Polling data shows that 43% of the population is pro-life and that most of those who identify as pro-choice wish to find ways of reducing the number of abortions performed.

Let us assume then that most every woman who chooses to carry a pregnancy to term wishes for the baby to be born health and grow up to be President or an Astronaut. I’m thinking that this is pretty true regardless of their ideas on abortion. Ironically, if they were to give birth in another developed nation with “socialised” healthcare and less outspoken criticism of the choice of abortion, their child would have a higher chance of surviving childbirth. I’m thinking that if the 43% of the population indicating “pro-choice” were really very concerned about protecting the lives of potential astronauts, they’d start with the women who wanted to give birth. I would think that their first move would be to improve the healthcare system in the U.S. so that it could take better care of those who wished to give birth. Sadly though, and I couldn’t find statistics to support this hypothesis, I believe that most of the pro-life crowd are also anti-universal-healthcare. Also, I could not find any data on infant mortality against income in the U.S. but it would make sense that lower income would have higher infant mortality as well as non-insured have a higher infant mortality.

I don’t agree with where the current bill has gone and I sincerely hope that it gets washed out so that we can try again and do it right. The U.S. needs real healthcare reform. It does not need bending over to corporate interests as a patch-up measure.

The Bill had two objectives: provide healthcare coverage to those without and to rein in the ever rising costs of medical care. The Senate committee successfully managed to reduce this to making a vague arm-waving attempt at seeming like they are thinking about slowing the inflation of medical costs. Maybe. It would be like going to war with the primary objective of finding the leader and the high-ranking members of a terrorist network and bringing them to justice, and the secondary objective of inflicting peace on Middle East nations only to bail almost entirely and settle for installing U.S.-friendly governments who will help us with future oil interests.

The arguments come out almost as they always have. This bill is a job-killer, will hurt small businesses, will allow the government to decide to kill you, will kick small puppies in darkened alleys.

In the current system, Healthcare coverage is run by corporations, not doctors, not puppies with lab coats, not magic faeries or good-natured wealthy benefactors who would rather enjoy watching you grow up through the years, encouraging you through trials and tribulations, and celebrating your victories. A corporation has a legal obligation to do the thing that maximises the profits of the stock-holders. If you, as a prospective patient, would potentially cost the corporation millions in profits, you would be denied coverage. It is a simple equation. Not mean-spirited, not evil, not personal. Simple. Corporations are amoral. Trying to get them to act moral under their own devices is an impossible contradiction to their legal obligation to make more money. That’s where regulation came in. The idea was to try and give the implicitly amoral corporations a moral arm, the Jiminy Cricket of the corporate world.

In the current system, it is an amoral entity driven by profits that decides if your treatment for an illness will be covered. Think what you will of the government, but at the very least they are, as we are keenly aware, not driven by profit.

I recommend reading the short list of Healthcare facts on the non-partisan NCHC page. For example, the rate of employer-based covered dropped from 70% to 62% in ten years. Nearly 1.3 million full-time workers lost their health coverage in one year (2006 -2007). Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more. Put simply, that means that the middle-class is losing their health insurance faster than anyone else. Businesses are more hurt by employees who are ill or have worries about ill family than a universal healthcare system, i’ll wager.