Health Care BS

I belong to an organization called the Healthcare Financial Management Association. When I opened up the latest edition of the organization’s monthly magazine I found this feature by Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union. Historically, the HFMA has been studiously apolitical, but Stern’s article is a transparent piece of left-wing advocacy. Using the de rigueur euphemism for socialized medicine, he calls for “universal health care.”

It may be tough for some providers and insurers to confront the reality that the current system is crumbling. But America desperately needs your leadership … It starts with a universal system that provides affordable coverage, choice of physicians and insurance plans, core benefits …

As John R. Graham points out in Friday’s Washington Times, there is a good reason why Mr. Stern is so enthusiastic about government-run health care:

Under government monopoly health care, almost everyone in America’s hospitals, except the physicians and the executives, would be forced to join a union, just like our public schools.

And, just as a union-dominated, government monopoly has vitiated the quality of American public education, government-run health care in the clutches of the SEIU would reduce the quality of treatment received by American patients.

It is disappointing to find that the the “universal health care” disease has metastasized to the HFMA.