America For Purchase

14,000 people in the U.S. lose their health insurance every day.

A New York Times poll June 21, 2009 show 72% of Americans support a government health insurance plan and 57% are willing to pay more taxes for universal health care. An NBC/WSJ Poll: 76% of Americans Support Public Health Insurance Option.  [.pdf] These polls clearly show the majority of Americans support for key ingredients to fixing health care like shared responsibility among employers, government, and individuals to solve the health care crisis with strong protections for small businesses. In fact, every major proposal in President Obama’s health care plan received strong support.  Also see the Huffington Post.700 state legislators from every state have signed on to a letter to the President, HHS Secretary Sebelius, and leaders in Congress, asking them to support the key ingredients for real health care reform.  From the letter:

Key priorities for reform are reflected in recent state initiatives and public opinion polls which show that Americans want more choices and options for quality health care. Americans recognize that the private sector alone has proven incapable of creating a high-quality, fair, and accountable health care system that works for all families. Therefore, a key priority for reform is the choice of a public health insurance plan that is available to businesses, individuals, and families.  (Check out the letter on the Progressive State Network’s website and see if your state legislator has signed on.)

Doctors and physicians-in-training put out a statement in support of the creation of a public health insurance option signed by eight organizations: CIR/SEIU Healthcare, the Doctors Council, AAFP, AMSA, Doctors for America, NPA and SNMA. The groups–whose members combined represent 215,000 physicians and physicians-in-training–also hosted a conference call with key reporters to express their support for President Obama’s goals for healthcare reform. “We believe we need a truly robust, quality public health insurance option,” said Dr. L. Toni Lewis, President of CIR/SEIU Healthcare (CIR). “Quality is something I really want to stress here, meaning: our patients would have a public option that provides them with the care they need.”

“The thousands of devastating stories of Americans unable to get care can make it feel impossible to practice medicine some days,” says NPA President Dr. Valerie Arkoosh. “But these stories also serve to remind us every day of our ethical duties to put our patients’ care ahead of insurance companies. Competition provides us with choice and makes our market better–and a strong, national health insurance option would do the same.”

On “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos”  Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham erroneously said ‘the last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government run health care system where you have a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor.”  Obviously this Republican scare tactic overlooks the obvious that there is already a bureaucrat standing between the patient and the doctor today and that is the massive insurance companies who tell Americans what treatments and care they will pay for and what treatments and care they will NOT pay for, regardless of whether it adversely affects the health of the patient.

Competition drives down costs.  Republicans throughout history taut competition as driving down costs however they do not favor health care option that drive down costs because they do not want to stop health care insurance lobbyists from making huge financial donations to their personal campaigns and they prefer health insurance profits over the health care of the American family.  The irony here is that every member of Congress and their families have GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE, paid for by hardworking, taxpaying American families.

Health care costs have gone up 86% since 1996.  American families cannot afford this.  A family of 4 now has to pay on average $12,000 a year just for health insurance.  In 20 years the cost could be half the gross income of a family spent on health care premiums.  The single payer plan is not socialized medicine, it is not a socialized plan from other countries, it would be an American plan designed and created by Americans that meet the needs of all American families.

The fact is, America’s healthcare system is broken and all the right-wing continues to do is champion the status quo and purposely distort the reality of what fixing healthcare will mean to millions of American families.

Republicans and some squeamish Democrats are NOT listening to Americans.  They continue to ignore families who file record numbers of health care related bankruptcies (50% caused by health reasons) and the 47 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance.

And for Americans who ‘think’ they have health insurance, you should read the lead story today in the Boston Globe.  As nyceve points out on Daily Kos “Even those Americans like some of us, with very expensive junk insurance are unable to seek medical care in a timely fashion due to spiraling out of pocket costs. Escalating co-pays, deductibles and declining reimbursement make a routine trip to the doctor, a luxury purchase even many with insurance can no longer consider.”

“Around here, we’ve known about the concept we call, “think you’re insured, think again”, for a very long time, but the politicians, as you might expect, are still debating whether healthcare should even be a basic right of citizenship and available to everyone.”  nyceve provides input from the Boston Globe, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Blue Cross rate hike.

Read the article from the Boston Globe:

Costs are keeping patients from care; Copayments rise as families struggle:

“People with robust health insurance are putting off doctors’ appointments and skimping on prescriptions because they can’t afford the increasing costs of copayments and deductibles, according to managers of patient-assistance hot lines in Massachusetts.”

“Not that long ago, such dilemmas were typically faced by lower-income families, often on publicly subsidized insurance. But with many consumers struggling to pay rising healthcare costs amid today’s shrinking family budgets, these tough choices are becoming commonplace – even among families with employer-provided health insurance, consumer advocates say.”

And read this report from the Kaiser Family Foundation:

“Previously it was the uninsured,” Rukavina said.”Now we are seeing people with insurance, but they are struggling to pay their bills.”

Now look at this article from June 20, 2009: “Blue Cross seeks immediate rate hike
Move would affect 400,000 customers!”

“Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has asked the state to let it immediately raise rates for 400,000 people who buy their own health insurance outside the workplace.  …The state is reviewing Blue Cross’ request for an immediate rate hike.”

“If granted, monthly premiums for non-group policyholders immediately would increase 44.4%, compared with the 56% Blue Cross eventually wants for those plans.”

“Interim rate hikes Blue Cross seeks for group conversion policies that extend coverage people once had in a workplace would be 27.8%; the full rate hike pending calls for a 39.2% increase in those plans.” http://www.freep.com/…

Another great article is presented by Paul Rosenberg who writes “Proof that the Corporations are Running the Country”.

One thing Americans can do is Stand With Dr Dean and sign the petition for health care reform.

Remember, Congress wants nothing better than to keep Americans ‘hooked’ on private health insurance, where millions of our citizens and seniors cannot afford it, millions are denied coverage and millions of medical decisions are determined by health insurance companies, not doctors.  Remember, this debate is about OPTIONS and CHOICES, not doing away with existing health insurance coverage that many people want to keep.

Please visit:

• Health Care Now
• Physicians For A National Health Program
• 1Payer.Net
• California Nurses Association
• Single Payer Action

This chart is provided by Physicians for a National Health Program

The “Public Option” vs. Single Payer Compared
	Single-Payer	“Public Option”
Number Insured	Universal Coverage	Millions remain uninsured or underinsured
Coverage	Coverage for all medically necessary services.	Insurers continue to strip-down policies and increase patients’ co-payments and deductibles.
Cost	Redirect $350 billion in administrative waste to care; no net increase in health spending.	Increase health spending more than $1 trillion over 10 years.
Savings	$350 billion in administrative waste. Further systemic savings achieved through negotiated fee schedule with physicians, global budgeting of hospitals, bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals, rational planning of capital expenditures, etc.	Add further layers of administrative bloat to our health system through the introduction of a regulator / broker “exchange.”
Sustainability	Large scale cost controls (global budgeting, capital planning, etc.) ensure that benefits are sustainable over the long term.	Uncontrolled costs ensure that any gains in coverage are quickly erased as government is forced to hike spending or slash benefits.
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Tags AMA american medical association Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare doctors Doctors Council Health Care health care crisis health care reform healthcare reform HR 676 Medicare NBC patients physicians physicians-in-training polling President Obama Progressive State Network public health insurance option public health plan public health plan option public option state legislators uninsured Wall Street Journal

Filed under: American Injustice