Guaranteed Healthcare

Here is how to get involved to pass HR 676 from one RN's perspective.

Dear Friends and Family,

I have been a Registered Nurse for over 26 years in Texas andhave over 28 years in healthcare. My observations of our healthcare system, individual behavior,professional practice, and my study of economics have led to a unique understandingof this vital issue.  I encourageyou to research our current provision of healthcare and come to your ownconclusions. 

I have concluded that the time for half measures isover.  If something doesn’t work,let’s fix it!  Now is the time forbold action.  Do not be distractedby half-measures masquerading as earnest concern and action.  Intractable stands by free-marketeconomists, liberals, and conservatives need to loosen up. Raise your voice toyour elected officials, friends, acquaintances, family, and coworkers.  We need a national debate and decisiveaction.  Your elected officialswill listen.  If they don’t you canraise from your own ranks more appropriate candidates brave enough to take theaction needed to solve the problems we face as a nation.

I strongly support HR 676 as the bestsolution to this problem and a stimulus to our faltering economy. It is a singlepayer, private provider system, not socialized medicine.

Link:

http://www.pnhp.org/publications/united_states_national_health_care_act_hr_676.php

I will present my argument for this solution and referencesfor further fact-finding and research.

Our healthcare system is broken.  Many hardworkingAmericans who have lived by the rules, paid their taxes, and voted inelections, are suffering. They have purchased Health insurance for themselvesand their families, but find their treatment options severely limited byinsurance administrators, face high co-pays, and even lose their coverage whenthey need it most.  

Healthcare expenses are the second leading cause ofpersonal bankruptcy in the US.  Corporations complain of theburden of providing healthcare for their employees. Each year employers aredropping coverage for their employees or shifting more and more of the expenseon them.  Workers cannot afford the increases.  Incomes for honest working people, white collar and bluecollar, have become stagnant in our post cold war global economy and after theBush tax cuts for the wealthy have even dropped! The incomes of those in the top1% have grown from 9% of total national income in 1980 (before Reaganomics) to22% in 2007.  The beleaguered AutoIndustry complains that healthcare expenses add $2000.00 to the cost of eachcar, and saps their ability to compete in the global economy.  

Working Americans are getting stuck with ever increasingpremiums, co-pays, and deductibles.  Many cannot get Medical insurance dueto a pre-existing condition.  People are suffering and dying from lack ofaccess to good medical care.  Private specialty hospitals are siphoningoff well-heeled patients leaving the public and community hospitals with theoverwhelming burden of caring for the uninsured and underinsured.  Theonly place some residents can go for healthcare is the most expensive…our crowdedEmergency Rooms.  Some Doctors and providers are going to courts togarnish the wages of sick people for unpaid bills.  Our nationalmeasures of health show us behind much of the industrialized world.

Although the current system is failing to place Americansahead of the rest of the industrialized world in overall health, it has been atremendously successful in producing record profits to Hospital Corporations,Non-profits, Pharmaceutical Companies, and the Insurance Industry.

Our job prospects, or lack thereof, are strongly influencedby the amount of risk we are willing to take to be without Health insurance. Many workers are stuck in jobs they do not like, or pass up opportunitiesfor growth, greater productivity, or self-employment because they don't want tojeopardize their health benefit for themselves or a family member.

We just authorized 700 billion dollars in debt to bail outthe banks.  Can we invest in the prosperity of our country and ourcitizen's health?  Is it morally just to bail out bankers and leave manyof our citizens without access to healthcare?  Should your access tohealthcare be determined by your economic performance? 

Our current system is wasteful and inefficient. Privateinsurers spend 30% of our premiums in administrative costs.  Througheconomy of scale Single payer would be much less than 10%.  A significantportion of the private administrative cost is to an army of people whose solefocus is to deny payments and coverage to sick policyholders.  The moreclaims they deny the more profits the company makes and bonuses they get. I call this “Misery Money”. That money could be spent on providing healthcare to every resident ofthis country.  

We all have a stake in a healthy populace.  If theimmigrant child spreads tuberculosis to your child in public school we allsuffer the consequences.  If our Emergency rooms are overcrowded with theuninsured, emergency care will suffer or be delayed through depletion ofresources.

If there is one payer for all health care, prices can be controlledthrough economies of scale and bargaining power.  The healthcare providerscost of providing care will go down.  They will no longer have to spend asignificant amount on administrative resources or suffer the frustration indealing with a multitude of payers.  Those resources instead can go toprovision of healthcare, education, improved technology and efficiency, andsafety measures.  Providers will beassured of compensation for each and every patient they see, without having togauge their ability to pay. Paperwork will be reduced.  Arguments over appropriateness of carewill be reduced.  Incidents of youand your physicians having to argue the merits of a treatment decision to aninsurance administration bureaucrat will be decreased.  There will be incentives forpreventative healthcare.  The profit motive of private insurers is anincentive to deny care, and reject policyholders who are sick from their rolls.

Keeping the populace healthy will pay benefitseconomically in increased productivity and fewer sick days.  There canbe effective economic incentives to change bad health practices. It is alsomorally the right thing to do. Each of us will be covered.  We will free to pursue our interestsand passions without the distraction of insecurity that we will not be treatedfor, or financially ruined by illness. Those of us with chronic illness willnot have to fear loss of coverage. Healthcare workers, Physicians, andNurses can focus on what they do best, treating the sick and injured.  Productivity of the entire workforce will be improved with a renewed focus on our core missions minus thedistractions of our fragmented healthcare system.

When there is no fear of rejection of care for pre-existingconditions, your health history can move to a national database of healthrecords.  Properly protected, your healthcare provider of your ownchoosing, not one dictated by your insurance provider, can access your historywithout making you spend time repeating over and over your history, meds, allergies,advance directives, prior treatments, etc. Providers will be rewarded forimproving technology and efficiency to compete with one another for business.

Call your representative in Congress and ask them to supportthis bill for yourself, your family, your coworkers, and your country.

Here is a link to find out who represents you:

http://www.votesmart.org/

Thank-you,

David Smith RN, BSN

davidsmithrn@mac.com

Other Links:

http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/

http://www.pnhp.org/

http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/

Single-Payer Health Care Would Stimulate Economy

By JohnNichols
The Nation
January 14, 2009

There is anunhealthy tendency on the part of politicians and journalists to seediscussions about economic recovery and health care reform as separate debates.In fact, one of the most important steps on the road to economic recovery – or,more precisely, toward a new, responsible and sustainable prosperity – involvesthe fundamental reform this country's broken health care system. But it must bethe right reform: the establishment of a national single-payer style healthcarereform system by expanding the existing Medicare system to cover all Americans.According to a new "Single Payer/Medicare for All: An Economic StimulusPlan for the Nation" study releases toady by the National NursesOrganizing Committee/California Nurses Association, such a reform would providea major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs andinfusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy.This reform would, according to the study released today, add $100 billion inwages to the currently sputtering U.S. economy. Indeed, notes the NNOC/CAN, thenumber of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgradingMedicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008."These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a singlepayer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantiallycontribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economicrecovery," says NNOC/CAN c o-president Geri Jenkins, RN. Specifically,notes Jenkins, expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and those onMedicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for thosewith limited Medicare, would:

1. Create 2,613,495million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobslost in 2008) -- and jobs that are not easily shipped overseas 2. Boost theeconomy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues 3. Add $100billion in employee compensation 4. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion innew tax revenues

"Throughdirect and supplemental expenditures, healthcare is already a uniquely dominantforce in the U.S. economy," says the study's lead author, Don DeMoro, whodirects the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the NNOC/CNAresearch arm. "If we were to expand our present Medicare system to coverall Americans, the economic stimulus alone would create an immense engine thatwould help drive our national economy for decades to come. The union ishighlighting its "Single Payer Job Recovery" plan with a majorrollout today and activists with Progressive Democrats for America and othergroups that support single payer are staging a national call-in to CongressThursday. Here's the PDA Action Alert on the new push for single payer:

Congressman JohnConyers will reintroduce HR 676, his single-payer healthcare bill in the 111thCongress. Please ask your representative to cosponsor the bill and activelywork with Rep. Conyers to gain additional cosponsors. In order to ensure HR 676is part of the healthcare discussion in Congress, we need 150 cosponsors by theend of February.

Former Sen. TomDaschle, President-Elect Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and HumanServices, called for "a government-run insurance program modeled afterMedicare" in testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education,Labor and Pensions as part of the solution to our healthcare crisis. His planalso includes health insurance corporations. Only HR 676 would implement asustainable, fair, and efficient solution to the healthcare crisis as well asproviding economic stimulus.

While single-payerhealthcare proponents have made good headway in the House, there is still nocompanion bill in the Senate. Urge Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor a companionbill to HR 676 in the Senate.