Babycare: Way to universal healthcare?

Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski from Flickr Creative Commons

By Marybeth Gardam and James Allison, Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee

Should the Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee work on this idea for extending Medicare type benefits to newborns? Would you be willing to work on this with us? What it would mean? Why does this issue matter to a peace organization?

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis, suggests that we "give every child a Medicare card at birth, good until age 30." He says this in a piece entitled "In Praise of 'Unrealistic' Ideas," in The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2016, Vol. 21, No. 4.

Jim Allison of the CvD Issue Committee has been proposing a similar idea called “BABYCARE”. Jim sent Kuttner his WILPF white paper on Babycare and a note suggesting that WILPF might be interested in this kind of thing. Meanwhile the CvD Committee has been considering making the promotion of Babycare a long range goal. In a follow up email to Kuttner (bkuttner@brandeis.edu), CvD Chair Marybeth Gardam put it this way:

Dear Professor.Kuttner,

I read your statement in the Progressive Populist, March 1, 2016, Vol. 21, No.4. in which you stated that we should "give every child a Medicare card at birth, good until age 30."

I know that a colleague of mine, Professor Emeritus Jim Allison of Indiana University, has forwarded to you his brief whitepaper on BABYCARE, a similar proposal. Many WILPF members are interested in promoting this idea of single payer healthcare for newborns, extending throughout their lives.

What does a peace and justice organization have to do with universal healthcare? WILPF, the oldest international peace organization in the world has been connecting human rights and economic justice to the roots of war since 1915.

A few years ago I attended a rare appearance of the Dalai Lama in Iowa. In a packed arena, hushed to hear the Dalai Lama's quiet voice, a woman asked what appeared to be a very naive question. "What single thing can we do as a society to bring peace to the world?"

The Dalai Lama took this simplistic question very seriously and gave an answer that was breathtakingly simple and yet which offered potential for truly changing the dynamic of peace in the world.

He said that the one single most important change we could make across the planet was to make the world more secure and less threatening for mommies and babies. He pointed out that when young mothers and their babies feel unsupported, threatened, fearful and insecure in their world, they adopt a world view that promotes fearfulness and the perception of infinite lack – positioning them immediately, and for most of their lives going forward, to grasp any means available, expediency over all else, for survival and creating a reality where they must fight and scrap for every bit of food, clothing, housing, and healthcare. The end result of so many young lives feeling abandoned and desperate produces a justification for many kinds of violence in our world, including both the military being made a handmaiden for corporate profits, and the idea that there is a lack of abundance in the world that justifies putting profits (and self) above the common good.

WILPF has been educating the public about the links between social deprivation and the increase in violence we see in our world for decades. We would be very interested in helping to promote a program which does exactly what you and Jim both suggest. Babycare, or whatever you choose to call it, is an almost inarguable idea, in which young parents and grandparents could envision a better world for their progeny, across all economic classes. And it offers the government a way to ease into universal healthcare, gradually preparing for the administrative changes necessary to move past Obamacare. Moreover, it lifts up the important idea that the common good is worthy of our common investment.

Please let me know if you would be interested in collaborating in any way to move this concept closer to reality. We would be interested in exploring ways in which to make this concept better known and accepted... to make it 'go viral'.

Based in Boston, WILPF has branches in about 40 cities around the country. Most of us are grandmothers. All of us believe that healthcare is a human right, and we accept that corporate rule has inflicted us with the price-gouging of for-profit healthcare providers and insurers, and a disturbing policy of profits over people, which has caused a precipitous descent of quality healthcare in the United States, despite the high price tag we pay for basic health coverage. We understand that the Dalai Lama was correct, that the fragility of mommies and babies unsupported by a 'community', leads to deep divisions among us and the consequent acceptance of 'the other' that leads inevitably to greed and violence.
 

If WILPF members agree with CvD that this is an effort worth promoting, we ask them to join CvD and for a subcommittee to work on this. Contact Marybeth at mbgardam@gmail.com to get started. Also, please consider raising this issue with Presidential candidates as we move forward in the election cycle. All together now!