Boise State University President favors American option

Last week a new SurveyUSA poll was released showing public support for an American option on health care at 77 percent. While we don't take a lot of stock in polls here at the Northwest Progressive Institute, the number of people supporting a choice between a system that utilizes the common wealth to deliver care to the people who need it, as opposed to a private system that denies care in order to pad the bottom line for shareholders, remains consistently high.

And in a place where you might expect the most conservative of opinions on health insurance reform, it appears that even in Idaho, an American option is on the table. While delivering his State of the University Address last week, Boise State University President Bob Kustra (himself a Republican and former Lieutenant Governor of Illinois), deviated from his prepared remarks and spoke of the death of his son and the need for an American option.

“Over the course of the last 15 months, that we fought this battle, we saw close up what’s at stake in the current health care reform debate,” Kustra said. “We are living proof of how for-profit insurance companies and HMOs target people who are sick and who are ill and raise their premiums and raise their premiums until they can effectively kick them off of the rolls.”

[...]

“When we hear the 'public option,' and we hear the president thinking about dropping it from the plan, it worries me greatly that we would leave health care to the profit motive in America,” Kustra said.

[...]

“It doesn’t make any sense that this Faustian bargain that went awry should land in the laps of our most vulnerable citizens,” he said. "I know that I’m supposed to be skilled at politics ... but there’s no way that anyone should remain silent in the face of this injustice."

The right to affordable, quality health care is not solely for those who can pay for it, the chosen ones or even those who belong to one political party instead of another. It's a widely recognized human right, despite what naysayers like Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) say. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 (over 60 years ago), states:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

It doesn't matter whether you live in Idaho or California; urban America or rural America. It doesn't matter if you vote Republican or vote Democrat. Without an American option the corporate oligarchs will continue to choose profits over delivery of services. And just like Steve Kustra, son of a Republican former politician, more will become statistics under that system.