Health Care in a Time of Desolation Part 2

Part 1 is below


The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where the economic catastrophe is also a health care catastrophe. All of the other industrialized countries that have economic woes also have single-payer health care systems that work well and provide excellent health care for all of their citizens.

It appears that President Obama and leaders in Congress are not seriously considering the enactment of a single-payer system. Max Baucus, powerful Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, appears to favor continuance of private insurance alongside a weak public option by which people can choose to buy health insurance from the government. Senators Kennedy and Brown are pushing for a strong public option much like our Medicare system.

Many of us, however, would prefer to have a single-payer system and to change the whole corrupt, greedy, wasteful system of private health insurance. Congress should enact 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 all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with all medically necessary services, including hearing, eye care, mental health, and dental care for free.

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. People will be free to choose their own doctors and hospitals.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), in its first year the single-payer program will save over $150 billion in administrative costs and $50 billion by using rational bulk purchasing of medications. These savings are more than enough to cover all of the uninsured people in America and to improve coverage for everyone else. For all of 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 thousand.

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.

Your health insurance costs under USNHI will be dramatically lower than they are today. 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. The enactment of H.R. 676 will guarantee full health coverage to every American no matter the age, state of health, or prior condition. It will entirely eliminate any consideration of profit from medical health decisions.

If such a program is enacted, people who wait until the last minute to come into emergency rooms for treatment of dangerously advanced conditions, will now be able to go in for regular appointments. People who fail to have regular checkups for things like pap smears, mammograms, PSA tests, blood pressure, vaccines, cholesterol, and others, will now be able to afford preventive medicine. This will require additional health care reform to increase the number of doctors, clinics, and hospitals available to treat people.

President Obama should stop trying to mollify the health care industries and the Republicans in Congress. They want only to defeat his every effort at reform. Now is the time to do something really good and enact a single-payer health insurance program.