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Consensus Emerging on Universal Healthcare
The idea of a federal, single-payer system patterned on those in Europe and Canada, long a dream of the political left, is now virtually off the table.
WASHINGTON - After decades of failed efforts to reshape the nation's healthcare system, a consensus appears to be emerging in Washington about how to achieve the elusive goal of providing medical insurance to all Americans.
The answer, say leading groups of businesses, hospitals, doctors, labor unions and insurance companies -- as well as senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the new Obama administration -- is unprecedented government intervention to create a system of universal protection.
At the same time, those groups, which span the ideological and political spectrum, largely have agreed to preserve the employer-based system through which most Americans get their health insurance.
The idea of a federal, single-payer system patterned on those in Europe and Canada, long a dream of the political left, is now virtually off the table.
Rejected as well is the traditionally conservative concept, championed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the presidential campaign, of reforming healthcare mainly by giving incentives for more Americans to buy insurance on their own.
There also is a widespread understanding that any expansion of coverage must be accompanied by aggressive efforts to bring down costs and reward quality care. And key players in the healthcare debate increasingly back a massive investment of taxpayer money for healthcare reform despite the burgeoning budget deficits.
Beyond those areas of basic agreement, the details of what would be one of the most momentous changes in domestic policy since World War II remain vague.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama embraced both expanded insurance coverage and preservation of the job-centered system, but since he won the White House he has provided few specifics about his plans once he takes office.
Disagreements over specifics could again lead to a stalemate. Even the most sanguine advocates of sweeping reform concede that difficult negotiations lie ahead.
But what is taking shape is a debate very different from previous discussions about what America's healthcare system should look like.
"A lot has changed," said Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, a leading trade group whose members helped kill the Clinton administration's healthcare campaign in the early 1990s.
AHIP is participating in talks with other interest groups to build consensus before Obama takes office in January and Congress begins debating any healthcare legislation.
Unresolved issues
Among the issues to be decided as more concrete proposals emerge in the months ahead is whether the roughly 46 million uninsured people in the U.S. will be pushed to buy private coverage or will be enrolled in a government insurance program, as some consumer groups want.
Hospitals and doctors fear another public program would reduce what they are paid, as Medicare and Medicaid have done. Insurers worry they could lose customers to the government.
Also unresolved is what mechanisms might be created to force individuals or businesses to get insurance, both potentially contentious subjects.
And few have tackled how the government will control costs and set standards of care, proposals that raise the unpopular prospect of federal regulators dictating which doctors Americans can see and what drugs they can take.
"There are some very big questions and some very big stumbling blocks," said Stuart Butler, vice president for domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has been watching the healthcare debate for three decades.
"Once you get into the details, the consensus is going to vanish pretty quickly, I suspect," he said.
At the same time, advocates for a single-payer system, including the California Nurses Assn., have vowed to continue pushing the idea next year along with many Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Republican lawmakers, still reeling from their election day losses, have signaled discomfort with a major expansion of government spending, a position many in the GOP hope will help return the party to power.
"Increasing access for the uninsured is not going to come cheap," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said at a recent hearing on healthcare reform. "And it's clear to me that our economy cannot stand much further deficit spending."
Nonetheless, the current agreement on principles contrasts markedly with previous reform efforts. Today, many of the key players in the debate see the importance of preserving elements of the current healthcare system that many Americans say they like.
"There is a growing understanding that you have to give people choice and you can't take away what they have," said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, an influential advocacy group for healthcare consumers that is working with a diverse collection of interest groups to build consensus. "One of the big no-nos is that you must not ever threaten the coverage that people have."
The Clinton effort
Fifteen years ago, there was much less agreement about preserving an employment-based system that now insures about 177 million people.
Opponents of President Clinton's plan were able to sink it by raising the specter that government would take away consumers' choices in a new system that would force them into inferior health insurance.
But now the prospect of bold government action to address the healthcare crisis appears to have been accepted far more broadly by many of those involved in the debate.
Even business leaders traditionally wary of government intervention now are pushing for the federal government to act decisively to reshape the healthcare marketplace -- in large part because of the increasing burden imposed on them by rising costs.
"Doing this piecemeal is not going to work," said Todd Stottlemyer, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which was also instrumental in defeating the Clinton plan.
Many involved in the healthcare debate, including Democratic lawmakers and members of Obama's team, also see healthcare reform as part of a broader economic picture.
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have begun sketching out plans for healthcare reform that, like Obama's plan, preserve the employer-based system and create a new system for those without insurance.
Last month, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) outlined such a plan in an 87-page white paper titled "Call to Action." Similar approaches have been endorsed by House Democrats.
In contrast, the Clinton administration drew up its healthcare reform plan with little involvement from congressional Democrats. In the Senate, then-New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was chairman of the finance committee at the time, actively resisted the idea of sweeping change in healthcare.
There are no signs of a similar rift today, said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who has written a book about the failed Clinton effort.
"Possibly more important than policy agreements," Hacker said, "is the fact that the political forces now are in alignment."
43 Comments so far
Show AllUniversal Healthcare is National Social Debt.
Americans have Full Faith and Trust - or else!
"The issue of health care access has NOTHING to do with "giving people choices." Any article that portrays this consideration as having the slightest weight isn't worth taking seriously."
Good point.
This article is about manufacturing opinion and consent for whatever the "insurance companies see fit."
Please pardon this very important clarification. The issue of health care access has EVERYTHING to do with giving people choices! When the United States implements the best option for non-profit financing of health care, citizens will have the BEST choices! It will be GREAT!!!
If you want to learn more, then scroll down ... about a third of the way ... at the following web page and look at the small section titled "Lifestyle choices: (freedom!)"
Single-Payer Comparison to Current System
Bob Haiducek, Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate
"Possibly more important than policy agreements," Hacker said, "is the fact that the political forces now are in alignment."
More corporate welfare. We will not have a health care system worth a flip as long as there is a profit motive attached.
A single payer system will actually create more choice. A single payer system will give us a proactive system versus a reactive system thus lowering the overall cost to everybody.
Rickster
Yes, and you've hit on a key word "proactive" from another standpoint. Single-payer activists have an excellent opportunity to be efficiently proactive by focusing on solid education sessions of very small groups of citizens (target of 1-3 persons) within their U.S. Congressional Districts ... instead of inefficiently reactive with rallies, demonstrations, complaints about health insurance companies and various other reactionary activities in a so-called "fight."
We need to act positively ... that is, be proactive.
EDUCATION and ACTION -- Part of that education (above) is giving excellent replies to citizen concerns, questions, and comments. That will help solidify citizens' knowledge, awareness and support for what every other industrialized country has had for years: non-profit financing of health care. Another part of the education is giving citizens an opportunity to themselves being proactive in getting non-profit single-payer national health insurance ... and help them sign up to get reminders to follow the schedule to get their U.S. Representative's support for what we need.
AWARENESS -- Citizens need to fully appreciate how critical the coming months are. All other proposals currently under consideration will cause us citizens to pay significantly more to the health insurance companies and MUCH more of our money in taxes. It will be an amazing disaster for our businesses, our jobs, our health and our lives. Citizens need to know that their U.S. Representative wants to hear from them ... and support what their citizens want. Citizens need to know that non-profit single-payer national health insurance via U.S. House Resolution 676 will recover businesses, recover jobs, improve health and save lives.
Bob Haiducek, Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate
That may be the Washington consensus because the corporate medical/HC insurance industry has vastly more clout than citizens. But we know that a single payer Medicare for All system as proposed by Conyers HR676 bill is the only way that guarantees everybody quality coverage by controlling costs and allowing long term planning. HR676 can do this because it establishes a nonprofit national system that eliminates the ~35% overhead, bureaucratic paper shuffling & cost shifting, marketing & profits by private insurance companies. I support Cong. Conyers & the HR676 cosponsors, and the Healthcare-Now coalition.
Most American's want universal health care, so here is how I think it should be done:
1) Shift the entire budget( about 1.5 trillion) from Medicare and Medicaid to a Universal Health Care Plan.
2) Distribute the funds to the states based on population.
3) Institute a health care owners tax on every citizen ranging from 1-3,000 dollars annually, depending on income. All those who are unemployed or make less than eight thousand a year are exempt. This tax will be active for six years only.
4) Begin computerizing all health care information onto both state and local databases.
5) Use a lottery system to choose, state by state, which insurance agency would be granted the right to manage the logistics and paperwork of this universal plan. When the company is chosen they must limit their costs in administration to 2 percent profit on all handled cases.
6) Allow all previously established policies to be enforced until October 1st 2009-then each person who has a social security card will be issued a photo i.d. Universal Health care card. Any person who does not have a social security card
can file a claim when being processed at the site of coverage for insurance at a rate of 80% of the total charges or purchase private insurance-those who receive this claim must either have a green card or proof of visitor residence status.
7) This universal health card can be used at any hospital or doctors office for any service needed-excluding plastic surgery that is not reconstructive, experimental procedures that have been proven beneficial in at least four separate cases determined by medical records, and private rooms in a hospital. These will be paid by private insurance policies bought by any individual or group. All pharmaceuticals at a rate of 80 % would be included in the Universal health care plan.
This plan would free up trillions of dollars from businesses and organizations, and sky-rocket profits and productivity.
It would cover every person in America-and would eventually, when the paperwork is transfered, make this the easiest and most effective way to manage this enormous burden to all Americans. The option to include insurance companies as ombudsman would take the burden of implementing this program off of the federal, and state government, and satisfy the private sector, making it easier for the plan to be passed by congress.
if you have have any comments and questions please feel free to e-mail me at: Sonam7@ earthlink.net
Your plan sounds good to me with one exception; In other countries with Universal Health-care, legitimate visitors from other countries are not asked to pay for emergency services. With current health-care costs in America, that seems a good policy to help to maintain good relationships with tourists and relieve the fear of accidents or onslaught of an acute illness while traveling in the US.
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
Yes, I met a guy from Sweden in a hostel down in Miami a week ago, who said his biggest fear was breaking a bone while in America.
"All pharmaceuticals at a rate of 80 % would be included in the Universal health care plan."
May I ask how many "pharmaceuticals" you are taking?
I take four and my spouse takes three. The cost = $907 every month. 20%= $181. And we are relatively healthy!
I think we need to examine why "our" pharmaceutical companies can sell their products to Canada and the rest of the world for significantly lower prices than they charge us.
When their profit margin is in line with the other Fortune 500 companies, then we might want to leave them alone, but considering they consistently show a profit of 17% compared to the 3% of the other companies, I think we need to bring them back down to earth.
And don't believe all their hype about how expensive R & D is. In the first place, many of their products are developed by universities and our NIH, which then give the formulae to those cash crazy companies to do with as they wish.
Secondly, they spend 14% of their revenues for R & D. Oh, yeah, that's expensive....unless you compare it to how much goes for Marketing and Administration: 31%...!!
yohocoma:An English physician in "Sicko" talks about how much money he makes and that he has a nice house and car. Doctors "shot themselves in the foot" when the AMA fought health care reform (when Hillary Clinton was doing her not so great legislation on it), and now they are really unhappy with HMOs making them "paid employees". I really like your last line. I once nearly caused a doctor to choke, when at a dinner (filling in for a no-show guest), I said, "a doctor is like a car mechanic but for human bodies.". There are physicians for single payer (which may be the name of the group).
matthew loughran
hi nycartist. the group is pnhp.org single payer has to be put back on the table by everyone. this bullshit profit driven insurance system is causing more people to be unisured. with this economy going in the shitter you will see an explosion of people becoming uninsured. this includes families and children. we are long overdue to have single payer in this country. i am from the nyc area but i live in Galveston tx and i see how a crappy state like texas can cause great harm doing nothing to help the unisured in texas. I am with the group hcfat.org working to push for single payer with the texas congress members.
The Military and the VA have socialized medicine. Why can't we all have single payer with a tiny fraction of what we waste on the military budget?
ezeflyer:yes. The only reason we don't have single payer is the politicians in Congress. For decades.
We, the people, who are majority in favor of single payer or medicare for all, are going to put the idea "back on the table". When I start to read an article, I look at where it was published. If it's a mainstream newspaper, I'm immediately suspicious. And Sen. Daniel Moynihan was strongly disliked by many for his disdain for welfare and those who need/needed it.
How we plan to put the idea "back on the table" is critical. Are we going to do it by "fighting" or by "educating". See more on that below in my comments about being proactive.
Bob Haiducek, Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate,
who advocates getting reminders to follow the schedule.
This is a classic propaganda piece. Disgusting!
The key issue, which this article didn't mention, is the importance of preserving the employer-based aspect of the stystem. The loss of insurance is a sword dangling over every US worker. it is pivotal in allowing corporations to maintain a cheap, cowed, work force, which is the US's competetive edge over Canada, Japan or Europe.
No where else in the industrial world, except the US, do workers have such constant fear of getting fired. They forego vacation and even refuse to stay home when ill in their efforts to supplicate their bosses.
I personally kenw two dying co-workers who stayed on the job until going to their final hospital deathbeds in order to keep their insurance. This is a cruel outrage that will only continue under the Obama plan.
---USAn---
Actually, the "employer provided" model of healthcare is a huge drag on US Business and they would dearly love to be rid of it. The reason from the government's perspective to maintain it is that it's an indirect tax (the cost of employees healthcare being passed on to the consumer of that company's products/services) rather than a more visible direct tax of hundreds of billions of dollars needed to fund a government run system.
Sorry, but if you were correct in US businesses wanting single-payer healthcare, we would have had it long ago.
Once again, it is the power of the employer over employee that is the real brilliance of employer-provided health care.
My brother in Canada found that this was the starkest difference between Canadian and US workplaces.
---USAn---
U.S. businesses that want single-payer healthcare move to Canada.
The People want Universal Health-care.
The Insurance companies want Universal Insurance.
Business wants whatever will cost them least.
Doctors want enough pay to justify 11 years @ $35,000+ a year for school, massive malpractice insurance costs, and the rigors of an intense, highly skilled profession.
Corporations exist to profit - no - matter - what (or who) is adversely affected.
Politicians want the big backers to be happy, and the constituency not to be so angry that they won't re-elect them... so perhaps We the People need to start forming local-state-regional uproars to get Universal Health-care back on the table. (And perhaps the suggestions of sevenpointman would be a great place to start the discussion rolling)
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
America not only needs affordable health care, we need acceptable standards of health care, higher than what the state of Tennessee and a hospital in East Tennessee deem perfectly acceptable. http://www.wisecountyissues.com It's okay if you lay and rot to death, although maybe horrifying as Tennessee says, it's quite acceptable...
What do non-insurance businesses have to say about single-payer care? They should be as enthusiastic about it as us, since they'll no longer have uncontrollable medical costs.
See my comment below.
Also, never underestimate the power of business to simply oppose any government initiative simply because it is "socialism" - i.e it helps workers and therefore makes them less prone to their "discipline of the market".
Nothing bosses hate is an uppity worker.
---USAn---
Sen Max Baucus (D-MT), who's in a key position to influence reform health care legislation, was quoted in a local Montana newspaper yesterday as saying that: "... a single payer health care system is definitely off the table because there's no political will [to create one]."
What Baucus is rationalizing and unapologetically affirming is that he and his fellow corporate floozies in congress don't have the political will to fight greed-driven interests in the name of the people (because these same 'interests' also pay so many US Senators' re-election campaign costs every 6 yrs.)
So I would say to Max, et al: If America's intstitutionally-corrupt means of getting you and your fellow lawmakers [re]elected to office, puts you in such absurd political dilemmas, why don't you at least have the political will and decency to support radical public campaign financing reform?
There can be no answer to this last question, Max, because you and your friends have all proven again and again that you like -- and delight in -- these corruptions, just as they are. They're warm and comfy for you, no matter how hurtful and even murderous they are to millions of your electors.
Here's something for you to sleep-on, Max: You and your kind are unfit to hold public trust of any kind; you're all nothing less than the self-serving handmaidens of a monstrous, criminal system.
We should tell him to resign, if he dislikes his job of representing his electorate so much.
60% of all Physicians surveyed in a nationwide poll recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine support a single payer national health insurance based on Medicare. 60 million uninsured patients, 75 million underinsured patients, 75 million Medicare and Medicaid recipients, 20 million veterans and scores of small and large business and pensioners would all support the more comprehensive and portable health care and pharmaceutical coverage of a single payer health insurance based on Medicare. So, if our representatives and administrative branches of government don't support the aforementioned majority of Americans and doctors who would benefit with a single payer health insurance plan with private physicians and hospitals and therapists, who exactly are they representing??
H. Green, MD, FACP, FAAD, FACMS
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/february/what_government_does.php
hag2:I remember how the AMA joined the fight against Hillary Clinton's inadequate plan not too long ago. In Robert Caro's book about LBJ in the Senate, "Master of the Senate", LBJ years, the 3rd book of the series, surprised me, when I read that the AMA fought against including disabled in Social Security legislation. The polls indicate that the majority of Americans want single payer, or called Medicare for All. I am not sure why Congress does resist what the public wants. I'm glad there are physicians for single payer.
The Call to Action/Health Care Reform 2009 proposal released 11/13/08
(http://www.finance.senate.gov/) by Senator Max Baucus is a disaster.
The Baucus plan is an expansion and continuation of the status-quo
mixture of a government subsidized ineffective private health
maintenance insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare
Insurance.
7 Specific Reasons Why the Baucus Health Reform 2009 Plan Fails.....
1) The Baucus plan fails to enroll all Americans in a single payer
National Health Insurance such as the most efficient health insurance
plan (Medicare) which is already contracted with most doctors,
hospitals and clinics in the Country. Medicare has the lowest operating
expenses and the best morbidity (sickness rates) and mortality (death
rates) compared to all other insurance companies. The Baucus plan will
therefore divert $700 Billion to $1 Trillion per year away from
patients, hospitals, doctors, clinics, nurses, pharmaceuticals,
therapist and researchers into the overhead pockets of health private
insurance company administrators and executives.
2) The Baucus plan fails to technologically upgrade, integrate and
centralize medical billing and records systems in order to optimize
examination of clinical outcomes, pharmaceutical efficacies and monitor
fraud and abuse. In addition, by failing to centralize and
technologically upgrade billing and records systems within a single
National Health Insurance plan, America will be unable to instantly
monitor disease outbreaks and instantly respond to natural and man made
disasters or bio-nuclear terrorism..
3) The Baucus plan fails to control drug costs by failing to allow a
single efficient national health insurance company such as Medicare to
bid on pharmaceuticals. In addition, the Baucus plan by failing to put
all Americans on a National Health Insurance Plan such as Medicare does
little to shrink the 'risk pool' of insured, thereby failing to decrease
insurance premium expenses for all Americans.
4) The Baucus plan fails to provide funding for scientific, clinical and
epidemiological research and development by allowing private private
insurance companies to divert funds from medical research and
development to instead support their massive and profitable
administrative and executive bureaucratic overheads.
5) The Baucus plan fails to provide physicians with the same legal
protection from malpractice lawsuits which have been established for
commercial health insurance corporations during the last 3 decades.
6) The Baucus plan fails to explain where to find the 1.5 million new
health care workers which will be needed once 100 million new Americans
obtain health care insurance. Health care workers can be found easily by
shutting down the wasteful and inefficient private health insurance
companies, putting all Americans on National Health Insurance such as
Medicare. The 1.5 million former private insurance company bureaucrats
can then be reemployed to actually deliver health care in hospitals,
clinics, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, pharmacies and home
health services such as Alzheimer family assistance.
7) The Baucus Plan fails to address this problem of disenfranchised
physicians. Many physicians in this country have left the practice of
medicine, or downsized their practices due to private insurance company
abuses, malpractice threats and direct pharmaceutical marketing. A
recent national poll of physicians based on the AMA database
demonstrated that 60% of physicians support a single payer National
Health Insurance such as Medicare. A continuation and technological
upgrading of our most fair Medicare Health Insurance for all based on
the concepts outlined above would undoubtedly motivate those
disenfranchised physicians to return to the profession and bright
younger physicians to invigorate the field.
The Baucus plan is wasteful, inefficient, fragmented, creates a new
redundant bureaucracy and will continue to provide no potential future
health improvements for America. Only an efficient National Health
Insurance carrier such as a technologically upgraded Medicare Insurance
company will be able to provide low cost health insurance and pharmaceuticals
for all Americans while maintaining the quality of private physician practices and Hospitals.
Hillary's plan was to keep the fingers of the Insurance industry in the pot.
She had Zoe Baird the Chairman of the Board at Aetna running the game for her.
Zoe was not about to do away with her bread and butter, the Aetna corp..
It's time to call the Clintons for what they are, opportunists for themselves.
Billy-boy made ten million dollars last year. Was that for the common good of the country? or the common good of the Hillaries? We voted the Hillaries out and
chose Obama, why don't the Clintons get it? Their hunger and greed seems to
control their very existence. Will Obama convert her? or will he join her?
Good God! What on earth does Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton have to do with this discussion?
What is Obama doing about health care? That is the question.
Every other industrial nation provides universal medical care for approximately $3000 per capita per year. The United States spends approximatey $6000 per person per year, yet 16% of its citizens remain uninsured and a comparable number are under-insured. The difference is due in part to insurance company profits and a huge bureaucracy, both accounting for approximately 30% of the health care dollar. In addition, each provider--doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.-- must have clerical staffs that can manage the different forms and regulations of hundreds of insurance companies; these account for another 20% of the health care dollar. Thus, half of our health care dollar is wasted. By contrast, the overhead for Medicare, before the Bush administration included commercial insurance companies in its management, was approximately three per cent.
The dynamics are also important. The un- and under-insured receive much of their medical care in emergency rooms that are very expensive for both mild or severe disease. The emergency rooms are unable to afford the large amount of uncompensated care that they render, so they shift the costs to the insurance companies. These in turn increase premiums, co-pays and deductibles. As these rise, individuals and employers are priced out of the system, creating more uninsured to go to the emergency rooms to shift more costs. This is why fifteen years ago there were 34 million uninsured, today the number approaches 50 million. So like it or not, the insured are paying for the un- and under-insured. Indeed, the United Nations World Health Organization ranked the United States 37th in over-all health care. That is also why the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences, declared four years ago that the current system of medial care in this country is unsustainable in the 21st Century. The system is imploding, and the current recession is surely accelerating it.
No manner of health care reform that leaves the insurance industry in the loop will work for very long. Middle class folks with health insurance cannot be sure that they will be insured tomorrow. Nor can they know whether their insurance coverage meets their needs until they use it, because insurance companies enhance their profits by providing coverage but denying care. The only system that will really work is a publily funded one, analogous to Medicare-for-all, where doctors and patients determine the care that patients need. There would be transparency and quality of medical care can be assured by the currrent system of depositing evidence for efficacy in the Cochrane Library.
Many pundits opine that the country cannot afford universal care, especially in hard times. Not so; clearly, there is plenty of waste in the system that can easily be recovered. Any additional taxes that may be required will be offset by the insurance premiums that will no longer be necessary. A publicly funded system would be a boon for our businesses in the global market place.
I agree that the president-elect and the Congress are probably not up to the task. The insurance industry is too strong and the country is too large and diverse. Historically, such progressive enterprises must be enacted in several states before being adopted nationally. Indeed, approximately 20 states are attempting to solve their health care problems; California, Colorado and Pennsylvania come to mind and this correspondent is familiar with activity in Ohio (www.SPANOhio.org).
Rest assured, the problem will get worse before it becomes better.
ALL states are trying to solve their health care problems. I know key details about the Massachusetts current attempt (that is, current failure). I realize that's mandated insurance, but that's Massachusetts' second failed attempt at reform, and it is in a group of six states that have failed. How many years of thousands of hours of effort has Ohio been working at it with how much effort? (I have an idea of the answer, as I was helping with the effort and attending meetings across the state five years ago.) And how long has California been working on it, spending huge amounts of time and effort?
Based on this country's past performance at both the state and federal levels on anything, and definitely including health care policy, I don't see any progress being made by working state-by-state.
On the other hand, education of citizens HAS occurred across the country. I can see it clearly during the last year or two as I monitored citizen comments. We just need to do a LOT more of it ... and FOCUS on that education instead of diluting our time and effort in multiple efforts! Read on!
We need to prepare citizens for change. My suggested strategy is titled exactly that: "Prepare for Change." Citizens in ALL parts of the country need to get education and need to get excellent replies to their concerns, questions and comments about non-profit single-payer national health insurance. Then, if they want to contribute by a simple act of ONE communication EACH month to ONE person (their U.S. Representative) they need to be helped to fill in a very simple screen and be assured that their e-mail address will not be spammed as a result.
It takes a big investment of time and effort to communicate and convince the state politicians in multiple states when we can all focus on ONE group: the U.S. Representatives.
As a fellow activist in a third state observed to me, you need ALL the football players running down the field in the SAME direction all TOGETHER. I suggest that there be activity to educate citizens in EVERY U.S. Congressional District in order to get the president-elect up to the task. Obama communicated in April 2007 that he requires a mandate from the people. Go to www.99oh9.org and select the link to Barack Obama.
See more below ... in my comments about being proactive, my reply to rickster469.
Bob Haiducek, Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate,
who advocates getting reminders to follow the schedule.
Since we already pay for a lot of people to "have the socialized medicine-we do not want."
Why don't the people who have their insurance paid for by the taxpayers opt out and buy their own coverage.
This would be no problem as these people are the ones against "socialized medicine." Once all of the tax dollars are returned to the people who pay for everyone else's insurance. The cost of health care will be cheaper as everyone will be purchasing their own.
This will quickly end all of the negativity about socialized medicine as these same people in opposition will suddenly support it because the money will be coming out of their own pockets.
Perhaps our only hope is that the coming Depression will create legions of the unemployed who will quickly begin to realize that healthcare is a right and not just a benefit for those lucky enough to be employed. One of the leading causes of personal financial ruin is to get injured or ill without health insurance. We can expect a tidal wave of bankruptsy (sp?) as unemployment tops 10 percent by the end of 2009 and keeps on rising for several years.
Unfortunately, recent studies show that most of the 46 million currently uninsured also do not vote. But the insurance companies have their armies of lobbyists working full time to protect the "rights" of the corporations. The questions is: Who will advocate for the disenfranchised?
LeeAnnG
One of the issues that is sometimes mentioned - but not nearly often enough - is that the same legislators who don't want all Americans to have universal coverage currently get their own insurance from the government. This double standard is appalling.
The insurance that the legislators get isn't free! Nor is it government provided. This is a common misconception.
It is the same plan all US government employees get. The employee picks from a menu of group plans. The government (employer) Pays about 2/3 of the cost and the employee pays the other 1/3.
For example, the non-HMO BC/BS plan I have costs me about $357 per month, and the government picks up the other $764 of the $1,121 total monthly premium cost.
In other words, the government plan isn't even as good as a lot of private employer plans in non-union workplaces. And most union workers would consider such a high employee share completely unacceptable. In fact, US Postal workers get a much better deal because of their union.
The rates are here:
http://www.opm.gov/insure/health/rates/index.asp
---USAn---
Most of us don't earn $165,000 a year or more to pay that $4,200 share of the insurance premium. Do you want to pay that much money when you could be paying $3,000? And why should our government be picking up the additional $9,000? So 50% of that premium can be wasted on insurance company profits and a huge bureaucracy, both accounting for approximately 30% of the health care dollar. Plus each provider--doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.-- must have clerical staffs that can manage the different forms and regulations of hundreds of insurance companies; these account for another 20% of the health care dollar. 50% wasted!
I scream NO!! I don't want any part of this. Health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are profiting over our dead bodies!!! It's high time they went the way of the dinosaurs.
I don't earn 165,000 either. I earn about $69,000 - before taxes, the $4,200 share of medical insurance, thrift plan and retirement deductions, etc.
The government is picking up the extra $9,000 because the government is my employer, and medical insurance is a fringe benefit. GM or Microsoft or your local supermarket cover at least as much medical insurance costs for their employees too.
But if I got laid off, I could continue coverage but at the full $1120 per month - an impossible sum to have to pay when out of work. As far as I know, the Obama plan would not help me at all - under his plan, to get a gov-subsidized healthcare, I would have to go through some kind of means-test application process - anyone who has ever applies for food stamps or other welfare knows how humiliating that is - and I still wouldn't qualify - merely owning a house and a car or any retirement savings at all would be disqualifying.
---USAn---
Dear PJD,
I'm not criticizing you. I am criticizing our current health care system. And even though you don't earn $165,000, that is the average salary of George W. Bush's White House staff, of which there are over 800, not to mention the thousands who work for Congress with an average salary of $134,000.
Most of us who work for companies who subsidize our health insurance also have the opportunity to pay the entire insurance premium if/when we are no longer employed by that company. Isn't that reassuring?
And, yes, Obama's plan is a scam to increase the bottom line of insurance companies.
The only good plan is a not-for-profit, single-payer system.