Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
Every day, it seems, we Americans are hearing about the need to bail out Wall Street and the investment banking industry, the automotive industry and, recently, the developers of large shopping malls and office complexes. For many of us, the future is frightening.
Perhaps we could heed the request of President-elect Barack Obama and come together as a nation to discuss and to change the health care industry. Clearly, it is not working, with 46 million uninsured and even more underinsured. More than half the bankruptcies in the United States are related to unaffordable medical costs. Perhaps it is time to pre-empt a bailout with a phase-out of the way we provide health insurance in this country.
The book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis” by Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Jeanne M. Lambrew, with Scott S. Greenberger, states, “The world’s highest-ranking health care systems employ a ‘single-payer’ strategy – the government is responsible for paying the doctors, hospitals and other providers. Supporters say single payer is brilliantly simple, ensures equity and saves billions of dollars by creating economies of scale and streamlining administration. But a pure single-payer system is politically problematic in the United States right now. Opponents of reform have demonized government-run systems as ‘socialized medicine.’ ”
One wonders how, then, how legislation enacting Medicare was passed into law 40 years ago and even today Medicare receives more favorable ratings from those people it covers than from those who are covered by private health insurance. That is not to say that Medicare today as we know it is perfect. Far from it, especially since it has been cannibalized by private insurance companies with Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare D plans that have made billions of dollars for the health insurance industry, far beyond the benefits that those programs have provided.
Medicare needs to be improved and expanded, but it is a sound plan and a good investment in America’s citizens. It has been working for 40 years. Very few people older than 65 turn it down. It is highly likely that Warren Buffet and Walter Cronkite are Medicare recipients, and I doubt that these paragons of society are socialists.
The Obama team must know that political courage and long-term planning will be of paramount importance in devising a health care strategy to return America to the great nation that we believe it to be.
President-elect Obama said, “Some say we cannot afford to fix the health care system right now. I ask how we afford not to?” And he is correct.
There is a bill in Congress, HR 676, “The National Health Insurance Act,” that has not had a hearing under either a Democratic or a Republican administration since its introduction to the House Ways and Means Committee in 1993.
Why has no hearing been held? Is it because of the opponents of reform, those industries that stand to lose money and power?
Is it really true that America cannot have the best health care system because of powerful interest groups?
To me, that is more frightening than socialized medicine and implies that we citizens have totally lost control of our government, that what we discuss in our own legislature is pre-screened.
The Obama team is asking all Americans to hold or to attend health care community discussions before Dec. 31. Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan will be hosting such a discussion at 7 p.m. Monday at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House at 5310 Old Mill Road. All points of view are welcome.
I would assume that if the new administration wanted a real discussion, HR 676 could be brought out of the House Ways and Means Committee, despite its opponents, despite the powerful interests, despite the fear of controversy, and let the American people hear all sides of single-payer universal health care plan before we devise a another Rube Goldberg contraption of a plan that further complicates, not simplifies, the way we provide, or refuse to provide, health care in this country.
Let’s evaluate HR 676, “The National Health Insurance Act,” on its merits, not the myth that surrounds it. I expect this from the Obama administration.
In light of what has been happening on Wall Street, with its unfathomable formulas for the investment industry that has led us to a world recession, let’s look at HR 676 as the good business plan that it is.
Unburden Americans from the highest health care costs in the world. Let’s talk about HR 676, which is affordable, accessible and portable – which is what we need right now. Our government could do this for us before we have to bail out the health insurance industry.
EDITH KENNA Fort Wayne
