Hundreds of Cornellians and Ithacans will rally in front of Bailey Hall tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. to tell Eliot Spitzer and John Faso that New York needs universal health care now. The two will later debate at 7. Barring a third party upset, one will be elected Governor in November and wield significant authority over health care statewide. Join us and the candidates and help ensure that our next governor is one who understands and supports decent, efficient healthcare for all New Yorkers.

Behind Tuesday’s rally are UAW Local 2300, representing 1,000 Cornell service and maintenance workers; SEIU Local 200, Cornell Organization for Labor Action, Tzedek: Jewish Social Action, Tompkins County Workers’ Center, Working Families Party, Citizen Action, Latino Civic Association, TC Health Care Task Force and Ithaca Health Alliance.

In June, rally co-organizer and Tompkins County Legislator Nathan Shinagawa ’05, who represents Collegetown, sponsored a resolution — that passed with a vote of 12 yeas to 2 nays — urging state government to enact universal health care and to implement “fair share” coverage in the interim. The latter program would levy a $3 per worker per hour surcharge on large employers who deny health coverage to their low-wage employees. It would insure several hundred thousand of the three million New Yorkers who are currently uninsured.

New York is the fifth wealthiest state, yet we have the second highest proportion of uninsured to insured residents. Ours is also the only state above nationwide averages for both wealth and inequality. The state constitution requires that the government care for the poor, which it does in part by contributing to Medicaid along with the federal government. Yet, according to the Workers’ Center’s Pete Meyers, poor people with jobs have the hardest time securing health care. They often earn too much to get free insurance, but not nearly enough to pay doctors’ bills, much less buy their own coverage.

Our inadequate patchwork of private insurance creates perverse incentives. It discourages work. It also hampers economic development, so important to slow-growth, high-unemployment central and upstate New York. Rather than attracting firms that train and hire skilled workers, pay well and provide good benefits — at an increasingly substantial cost — our heartless corporate environment accommodates low-wage, service-sector employers that refuse their employees coverage.

Last year, Toyota chose Ontario for its new RAV4 factory. Low-tax, ultra-low public service, non-union Alabama lost to famously high-tax, allegedly slow-growth Canada because Toyota pays for its employees’ health insurance in jurisdictions where their government does not. Princeton economist Paul Krugman sums up the Toyota case: “Treating people decently is sometimes a competitive advantage.”

New York already has a highly skilled workforce, largely owing to our state’s industrial heritage and enormous network of colleges and research universities. If we improve our business climate further by insuring all of our citizens, we can better compete for the firms that demand quality from their workers and treat them well in return. We could have an industrial renaissance.

24th district congressional candidate Michael Arcuri told Tompkins County Democrats Wednesday evening that he is running on family values like universal health care. Majorities of Americans have long agreed with Arcuri. In 1945, 75 percent of the nation favored national health care. After six decades of active, successful opposition by private insurers, drug companies and the American Medical Association, 72 percent of our kin across the United States still favor government guaranteed health care for all, according to a 2003 Pew poll.

Remarkably, the United States would actually save a great deal of money by creating a single-payer system that insures everyone. Though our life expectancies are lower and infant mortality rates higher than Canadians’ and Europeans’ — and though nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance at all — the U.S. government spends more on health care per person than Canada and France. And the U.S. private sector spends much, much more than in those other nations. Our health care costs nearly twice as much as theirs, but its outcomes are significantly worse and far less equitably distributed.

Other rich countries operate health care as an efficient public benefit while we are subject to the whim of a private sector that skims profits off of what we pay for care. U.S. insurers spend an estimated $200 billion each year denying people health coverage and care. Our government refuses to negotiate bulk purchasing agreements with drug companies though they largely sell drugs developed at publicly funded research institutions like Cornell. U.S. health care has nothing to do with free markets. It’s about subsidies, bureaucracy and greed at the expense of our health.

Luckily, we can move forward despite sclerosis and special interest lobbying at the White House and in Congress. It’s happened before. In the ’20s, federal administrations neglected public services. States addressed needs on their own. Then the Depression hit. States that had set up unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation systems and other components of a safety net offered models and data to a national government ready to address social and economic problems.

Because we are about to elect a new governor, we have a unique opportunity to innovate, while becoming more attractive to firms and helping working families. If we succeed, Washington will have a model to replicate nationwide. If our system has a few bugs in it, the feds can learn from our mistakes. Health care costs are already the top cause of personal bankruptcy. We can wait until they bankrupt more families, businesses and local governments as well, or we can use foreign examples as guides and fix our system now.

See you Tuesday at 5:30 in front of Bailey Hall.

Danny Pearlstein is a graduate student in City and Regional Planning. He can be reached at dpearlstein@gmail.com. Guest Room appears periodically.