PVCC Puma Press: March 2004

You're playing basketball with your friends. It's the third game, and the action is picking up when an ill-fated drive to the hoop leaves you with a badly twisted ankle. You try to walk it off, but the pain is too strong. So you sit down, carefully peel off your shoes and socks, and you see the swollen, throbbing mass of black and blue ankle. You know you've really done it this time; you are sure you need medical attention.

It gets worse.

You don't have medical insurance, so you have no other choice than to drive all the way down to the Maricopa County Medical Center. Then you wait. After about six hours, your name is finally called and a hospital employee wheels you to the treatment area, parading you down a hallway lined with beds containing other patients, injured or ill. After waiting again amongst the seemingly forgotten, your ankle is x-rayed, wrapped and you are sent home with a severe sprain on crutches. The doctors gives their expert advice about the ankle: "Don't use it." Then you get the bill in the mail a few days later: $400, for a twisted ankle and a pair of cheap crutches.

You are in the same predicament as over 41 million other Americans without health insurance as of 2001, according to the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC). The NCHC suggests that rising insurance premiums could raise the number of uninsured to between 51.2- 53.7 million by 2006.

According to a Nov. 2 "Arizona Republic" report by Jodie Snyder, citing statistics released by Hewitt and Associates, employees' premium costs are up 1.8 percent from 2002, nationally. In Phoenix the average is a 19 percent jump from 2002.

The massive increase is due to rising costs for companies to provide medical insurance to employees, and the will of those companies to greedily make the employees shoulder the bulk of the increases, according to "The Arizona Republic." A prime example of this employee health care price-gouging is Wal-Mart, Arizona's largest employer, raising its premiums by an average of 16 percent to $66.25 weekly. Other large employers in Arizona are doing the same, reports Snyder.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002, the least insured group of Americans in 2001 were those between the ages of 18 and 24 (representing the base of PVCC's student population). Twenty-eight percent of this group lacked health coverage that year. According to the NCHC, the numbers are rising.

While conservatives, who are politically dominant in Arizona, answer the cries for universal medical coverage with excuses about costs, Americans currently spend more than any other country on personal health care; $1.236 trillion in 2001, according to the book "Hidden Costs, Value lost: Uninsurance in America," released by the Board on Health Care Services and the Institute of Medicine. The book also states that America spends approximately $35 billion per year on health care for uninsured patients. If the U.S. takes the rational approach and socializes health care, costs will actually drop, the book states.

So why should the most progressive country in world trail behind inferior nations in how it takes care of its citizens?

It shouldn't.

Wake up, America. Let us finally take care of the only people who make our country the best one in the world, our legal citizens. Let's no longer be shown by the rest of the world how to run a country. America must develop a universal healthcare system that provides all of our people with quality and efficient service. People are dying, and we are one of the only first-tier countries in the world without socialized medicine.