H.R. 676 and Health Care in a Time of Desolation

In addition to the more than 72 million Americans lacking health insurance or underinsured, now there are additional millions of newly unemployed people losing their health insurance. The United States is the only industrialized country where the economic catastrophe will also be a healthcare catastrophe. All of the other industrialized countries that have economic woes also have governmentally provided health insurance for all of their citizens. The time has come to change our inefficient, fragmented, and costly health care system. We must join with our more enlightened European neighbors to enact a single-payer health insurance system in order to save billions of dollars and millions of our citizens from medical disaster.

This can be done quite easily through enactment of the United States National Health Insurance Act (USNHI), H.R. 676, introduced by Representative John Conyers of Michigan and supported by over 90 congressmen. The bill would provide to all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with all medically necessary services including primary care and prevention, surgery, inpatient care, emergency care, outpatient care, prescription drugs, dental, hearing, vision, eye care, psychological, and chiropractic—everything!

The bill is not modeled after the Canadian plan. Instead, it will be a kind of Medicare for all. It will not constitute socialized medicine. There will still be private doctors, and people will be free to choose their own doctors, hospitals, clinics, and practices.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), in its first year the single-payer program will save over $150 billion on paperwork and $50 billion by using rational bulk purchasing of medications. These savings are more than enough to cover all of the uninsured and improve coverage for everyone else. In case you are worried about the people in the private health insurance industry who will be put out of work, the bill provides replacement of two years salary, up to $100 K, to displaced workers.

Employers who currently provide coverage for their employees now pay an average of 8.5% of employees’ payroll towards health coverage. Many employers can’t afford to provide coverage at all. Private health insurance companies divert 30 cents of every healthcare dollar for CEO salaries, profits, and administration. Under this Act, employers will pay a modest 3.3% payroll tax per employee. The Act eliminates all other employer payments towards health insurance. The average yearly cost to an employer for an employee earning $35,000 per year is currently $2975. Under the new act it will be reduced to $1,155, less than $100 per month.

It is quite simple. Your health insurance costs under USNHI will be dramatically lower than they are today. Seniors as well as younger people will all have the comprehensive medication coverage they need.

We all know that insurance companies put their bottom line ahead of our health. People are denied coverage because of age, prior condition, or current illness. Some are dropped when they get sick. The enactment of H.R. 676 will guarantee full health coverage to every American no matter what age, prior condition, or the state of health. It will entirely eliminate any consideration of profit from medical health decisions.

Hundreds of organizations support H.R. 676, including Physicians for a National Health Program, the National Education Association, the United Federation of Teachers, The United Church of Christ, the Methodist Church, The American Medical Students Association, the National Association of Letter Carriers, Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, Ohio State AFL-CIO, and many others. You can see the list at http://pdamerica.org.