Will the Coronavirus epidemic change the way we see ”Medicare for All”?

By SJ Otto

In my life time I have never seen anything like this—the Coronavirus. I suppose we have had these kinds of public health emergencies, such as the plague, in the past. But I was born in the mid 1950s and nothing like this has happened since I was born.

I can't help wondering how well people will appreciate the capitalist way of trying to profit off of such tragedies. Most countries have a system of trying to provide health care to their citizens while the greedy bastard leaders of America insist on profiting from the sick and dying. Some people may get pissed off when they lose their loved ones due to the profitability, or lack of, curing those who can AFFORD their badly needed medicines. This just may change the way people look at our medical system.

Our most promising Democratic Candidate, the one we can be sure will win the nomination, Joe Biden, has resisted the idea of “Medicare for All.” He has ridiculed the idea and is just as anti-Medicare for the needy as our present day Idiot President Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders has made “Medicare for All” a major campaign promise. Biden has opposed his ideas and has ridiculed it.

Here are some comments from Biden on “Medicare for All:”

Biden suggests he would veto ‘Medicare for All’ over its price tag

Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested that he would veto the universal health-care legislation known as “Medicare for All” championed by his Democratic presidential primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, citing costs. 

“Nancy Pelosi gets a version of it through the House of Representatives. It comes to your desk. Do you veto it?” MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell asked Biden during an interview Monday night.

“I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of health care being available now,” Biden responded. “If they got that through in by some miracle or there’s an epiphany that occurred and some miracle occurred that said, ‘OK, it’s passed,’ then you got to look at the cost.”

Biden added: “I want to know, how did they find $35 trillion? What is that doing? Is it going to significantly raise taxes on the middle class, which it will? What’s going to happen?”

The remarks threatened to deepen fissures between the Democratic Party’s center, represented by Biden, and its left flank, embodied by Sanders, even as Biden looks likely to collect enough delegates to obtain an insurmountable lead in the Democratic primary. Six states hold primaries on Tuesday. 

As for my wife, Cam Gentry an me, we spend more that one fourth of our income on expensive diabetes medicine that we can not live without. I know we are not the only people in this situation. Cam and I get Medicare, the government subsidized program, which is for the elderly over 65 only. That means there are plenty of younger people who have the same problem and less funding to cover it. The Democratic Party has chosen Biden because they believe he can beat Trump in the general election. For those of us who are being ruined by medical expenses and problems, this is a bitter pill to swallow. Most of us, as with me and my wife, hate Trump and want him gone. At the same time we would like a candidate who will fix the problems we have to live with day to today. So if these problems are not fixed after the election, when will they get fixed? OR—will they ever get fixed. Biden talks about all the money it will take for a “Medicare for All” program, but for people as my wife and I, we are already spending most of our money on medicine. If Biden is elected nothing will change. If Trump is elected nothing will change. It is a lose-lose proposition.

Below is some history on medical epidemics:

From AMA Journal of Ethics:

In the 20th and 21st centuries, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and the threat of bioterror attacks have raised questions about the role of the physician in response to epidemics. Modern medical ethics, with its precepts of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and respect for patient autonomy, focuses almost exclusively on the relationship between the doctor and patient. As a result, this ethical framework is less well-equipped to deal with the relationship of the physician to society as a whole. Personal autonomy is often at odds with public health ethics, which stress the needs of the population over the needs of the individual.

The emphasis on the personal over the public applies to physicians as well as to their patients. Indeed, in the face of modern epidemics, the concept of a “duty-to-treat”—although explicitly and forcefully stated in the professional codes of the 19th and early 20th centuries—has been in conflict with a physician’s autonomy in determining whom he or she will treat.

While the ethical challenges of today may be new, the threat of epidemic is not. It was present when, in 1354, Henry, first Duke of Lancaster and grandfather of Henry IV, began writing a devotional treatise. Composed of daily entries, Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines (The Book of Holy Medicine) is unique among medieval devotional literature in that it contains the most extensive known use of medical metaphors and imagery to describe religious experience. The book is a catalogue of Henry’s sins, expressed as various wounds and diseases, followed by a similar account of spiritual remedies in the form of common medieval medical treatments. What ultimately moved Henry to write this work remains a mystery, but coming so soon after the first arrival of the Black Death in England in 1347, it is not hard to imagine that the swift and devastating mortality of the disease made an impact.

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I like to know what our enemies look like.—Pix from Coronavirus Disease 2019. Supposedly Viruses are not living things.