Between the Teaching Assistants' Association's fight to continue health care coverage and Gov. Jim Doyle's conflicts with the Food and Drug Administration over prescription drugs, health care and insurance should be high in the minds of those watching local events. Even at the national level, Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is talking about nationalized health care and President Bush's prescription drug program is flailing around rather ineffectually. Health care is big news and big money, but as the system exists now it just isn't enough.
On campus, the TAA is fighting to retain its free health insurance. TAs generally make less than $10,000 a year and the free health insurance provided to them is the only way they can gain coverage: There is no other way they can afford it. For uninsured students, the situation is the same-most are making less than five-figure incomes as they work to support their education, barely making enough money to cover tuition, housing and food, let alone health coverage. The smattering of free services offered by University Health Services, such as the Women's Health Clinic, can only go so far and cover so much: they do not take into consideration major medical emergencies, serious health problems or diseases. However, those limited services still put every student paying segregated fees above ordinary people who cannot afford insurance.
But for many undergraduates, health care is not one of their primary concerns: as long as they carry enough credits and stay in school, their parents' health insurance will cover it. If they're not lucky enough to have that, they still have access to Student Health Insurance Program, with its relatively low cost but fairly comprehensive insurance. But some students are not lucky enough to have that coverage, and even those who do will lose access to it upon graduation.
For graduates, one of their considerations as they commence their job search and enter the 'grown up' job market, health care coverage becomes a primary concern. Full-time jobs become a necessity, not even because they pay more or offer some measure of stability over the part time work students may have done, but because health care coverage is usually part of the benefits package. (On a side note, the same issues factor into a graduate student's choice of university, and if Madison is not offering insurance to its TAs, it cannot really compete with other schools that do.)
It's easy to spout off statistics and talk about the estimates of how many individuals are without health care coverage in the city, the state, the country. But the numbers don't seem to have enough of an impact to cause a mass movement to overhaul a system that leaves vast swathes of people, from the poor to those who are in transition, without health insurance. Speak of uninsured children and most are willing to listen, but speak of adults who find themselves without coverage and conservatives will start spitting flames. Their response isn't, \What's keeping these people from having insurance and how can we fix it?"" but ""Why don't those lazy worthless people buy it?""
There is little consideration for people with lifelong pre-existing conditions that insurance companies either refuse to cover, or are charged exorbitant premiums that would be more than rent. For those in transition, whether between jobs or in the uncertain time between graduation and workplace, a limited cash flow can make even limited, temporary coverage an impossible burden. And for those on the bottom of the ladder making minimum wage, health insurance is a mirage and the doctor is only someone to be visited in the case of dire need.
Health care should be a basic right-there is no fairness in a system that can force someone with limited means to choose between driving themselves into a lifetime of debt as they fight cancer or giving up quietly. If every life is valuable, which a pro-life stance seems to proclaim, then everyone should have access to a good doctor and adequate health care. Nationalized health care shouldn't be a pipe dream or something to be feared by conservatives. It should be embraced and advanced and made a reality, so that between conflicts the TAA's and the state are unnecessary, and no one goes without coverage, no matter their economic standing or place in life.
