Photo by me

Thursday afternoon, while I was stopped at a traffic light in front of the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield offices downtown, a demonstrators passed a flyer into the car. Their agenda: universal health care.

Baltimore’s protest against health insurance companies was part of a coordinated nationwide effort. Demonstrators are calling for the implementation of a single-payer health care system much like Medicare. Under such a system, the government or a contractor would manage the collection of fees and payment of costs — reducing the price of health care by eliminating many of the administrative costs incurred by insurance companies, like advertising and claims negotiation.

A member of the demonstration’s organizing group, the Maryland Universal Health Care Action Network, explained the single-payer system more simply: “Everyone would be covered and essentially have the same benefit package.”

Other local groups, like Maryland Citizens Health Initiative, support universal health care but don’t favor a single-payer system. Instead, they would like to see the current system tweaked to provide health care access to all citizens.

CareFirst responded to the protest in front of their downtown office by saying it “do[es] little to advance the national debate regarding viable ways to increase access to health care coverage.” I guess a big insurance company would say something like that.

Whenever the topic of universal health care comes up, someone in the discussion inevitably has a strong objection to it — which always takes me by surprise. To me, “health care for everyone” is long overdue. Germany started the movement all the way back in 1883, the United Kingdom became the first country to provide universal health care through the government in 1948, and nearly every other developed country has followed suit — except for the United States.

So, universal health care for Maryland: yea or nay?

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