One little known fact about this founding father - he was a socialist!Rush Limbaugh and the teabaggers would have you believe that health care reform is not only an improper government role of government, but that it is unconstitutional and socialist. How do our founding fathers respond?
On July 16, 1798, John Adams signed into law "Act for the relief of sick and disabled Seamen." With the stroke of his quill pen, Adams created the first publicly funded health care program in the United States, known then as the "Marine Hospital Service." The program, which covered all mariners in a socialized hospital network, was a series of government owned and operated hospitals paid out of the sailor's wages upon entering port.
Gautham Rao provides a full accounting of the Marine Hospital Service, which I highly recommend. In his accounting of the service, he writes:
"That the federal government created this health care system for merchant mariners in the early American republic will surprise many."
"A system that included twenty-six facilities in 1818 expanded to include ninety-five by 1858."
The system expanded not because government was forcing these hospitals on doctors or communities, they were in fact demanded by the citizens and doctors themselves.
"But sailors understood the marine hospital, not as an extension of the workplace, but as a place of rest and, in some cases, an opportunity for leisure. Staff, such as steward Adams Bailey of the Boston Marine Hospital, often charged that healthy patients feigned continued distress to prolong their stay in the marine hospital."
Yes, the system was so well managed that patients fake continued illness to stay in the hospital under the care they received.
"The marine hospitals, with the military, customs service, postal service, patent office, lighthouse service, land office, military pension system, and other institutions, formed the heart of an active, vibrant, and increasingly visible early American state."
All of the systems here were funded by collectivism, i.e. socialism.
On one particular (socialized health care) innovation :
'In 1844, Dr. John Gorrie invented artificial refrigeration and a form of air conditioning as a treatment for malaria and other "fevers" in the Apalachicola Marine Hospital. Gorrie quickly recognized the potential of his discovery. "We know of no want of mankind more urgent than the cheap means of producing an abundance of artificial cold," reported Gorrie in the Apalachicola Commercial Advertiser."
Innovations can, and did, occur in this system that resulted in better patient care and health outcomes, shocking!
Now, no one is suggesting we socialize medicine this time around (contrary to the belief of some of the right), but this does show that a responsible government can run an efficient, innovative, and successful health care system. The public option can be run equally as well.
What the citizens on the right fear is a loss of choice and having a health care system forced upon them. This is simply inaccurate, as they would be able to choose to obtain health insurance from the public option or to keep the insurance they have. The public option expands choice by offering a national option to compete with private insurance companies.
