Aravosis' Trip to the French Doctor

Recently, I posted a reference to an article discussing the inter-party divide caused by the current health care reform debate. Today we take a look at the argument of one side of the debate presented by John Aravosis from DC in his post on AMERICABlog.com, "My whopping $32 emergency room visit in the land of socialized medicine." In the post, Aravosis basically recalls a recent trip he made to an emergency room in France. Aravosis details his experience with the prompt and timely service he received, making intermittent comparisons with experiences in the States along the way.

The purpose of Aravosis' article is to point out to nonbelievers why America would be better off with universal health care and that the feared "socialism" that universal health care supposedly subscribes to is irrational.

In two separate contexts, I agree and disagree with Aravosis. If this article were not intentionally written in light of the current health care debate in its present state and was meant to be taken as a more general approach to viewing health care in America, then I would have agreed with his points. Much of Europe and many other countries have adopted universal health care, and based off not only Aravosis' experiences but some of my own as well, a trip to the doctor is rather pleasant in some of those nations compared with the U.S. However, Aravosis makes clear the context for his post: "With the national debate on health care raging in Washington, it seemed timely to share my story." The issue I have with his post when it's taken in consideration of the current debate is that it pits his argument against the arguments of those against the health care bill discussed in my previous post. When taken in this context, Aravosis' article fails to address the arguments of the opposition, notably the effective costs of the bill, and instead, simply reiterates the proposal of universal health care in the U.S. Essentially, Aravosis' account, however enlightening, ignores the issues with universal health care that the opposition presents and does next to nothing in resolving the health care debate. His experience simply tells us what we've already known about universal health care: it's cheap.