Can the medical-insurance complex put health care before profit?

On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a profound document owing much to the indefatigable efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt. The declaration recognized, for the first time, that fundamental human rights must be universally protected.

The first paragraph of the Preamble reads, "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world."

Our "rightful place" among all nations is a function of how we embrace these rights for all our citizens.

Article 25 of the declaration specifies the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

More recently, UNESCO published the Universal Declaration on BioEthics and Human Rights. Article 14: "The promotion of health and social development of their people is a central purpose of governments …"

Does true health care justice exist in Alaska or in the greater United States?

[Series of columns explores Alaska's extreme health-care costs]

Recently, Charles Wohlforth wrote a series of articles in Alaska Dispatch News concerning the health care crisis in Alaska.  On Sept. 5, he wrote, "The outrageous cost of health care in Alaska is crippling small businesses, stifling innovators and pushing ordinary people to make bizarre life decisions."

Health care inequality has intensified. Health care costs can now exceed the cost of housing. As Wolhforth pointed out, the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services' expenditures are now more than 42 percent of the Alaska budget and growing rapidly. Health care costs mark our state as less competitive and less desirable for work and family, "sucking the life" out of government functionality and trashing our future. It is an uncontested fact that Alaska health care costs far exceed other states', ratcheting up the cost of living and everything that follows.

This is the face of our unique American medical industrial capitalism complex. Let the buyer beware.

On Aug. 1, Wohlforth quoted an economist  to the effect that Alaska has a "massive wealth transfer of medical bills and insurance payments" to the wealthy — doctors, hospitals, insurers and Big Pharma, among many, contributing to the gross inequality across society, and for many a society that works (mostly) for health care.

And, to our national shame, tens of millions of our brothers and sisters remain uninsured, a plight unimaginable to we who are insured. And those 20 million who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act? Or the tens of thousands of Alaskans who gained Medicaid coverage in Alaska? Is it now to evaporate? Completely? Just a tad? Transformed? Do we dismiss our brothers and sisters as undeserving, welfare cheats, unworthy? Wherefore their most basic and fundamental human rights, their "inherent dignity"?

[How to transform Alaska's health-care system into something we can afford]

Only in the USA. Nowhere else in the Western world. How can this be morally and ethically acceptable in the 21st century in the wealthiest nation on Earth?

Recall that no persons or organizations representing health coverage for every citizen, as, for example, single-payer insurance, were even allowed to participate at the initial Affordable Care Act discussions. Only the medical industrial capitalist complex, the profit takers, were allowed at the "debate." Has undisguised self -interest displaced the paramount virtue "fidelity to trust and benevolence"? Is the patient relegated to wary consumer?

In this most intimate relationship, physician and patient, recall the Hippocratic Oath: "To my patients, I will do no harm or injustice to them. In purity and according to divine law I will carry out my life and my art. I will avoid any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption."

Several millennia ago, Confucius addressed the ethics of "Jin": "Medicine is a humanitarian (Jin) art (jyutsu). A physician must have a humanitarian heart."

Health care justice for all, for every Alaskan? How must a truly compassionate society respond? The Western world has long embraced a variety of health care models for its citizenry.  But only one embraces or permits private and corporate profit-taking as the primary model — the United States. Others demonstrate lower costs with overall outcomes superior to those in the United States.

Is our medical capitalism capable of a health care renaissance? Willing? Committed? In this era of increasing societal inequality, uncertainty and restlessness, should not health care justice be paramount if we indeed wish to achieve "security here in our home," and so confer to all inherent dignity?

Echoing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, "Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else."

Dr. Peter Mjos is a member of the Providence Alaska Medical Center Ethics Committee. The views expressed here are his own.

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com.