HealthCareForAmericaNow

Hello,
I am Chandra Martin a licensed insurance agent in Missouri.  There are many health insurance products available to meet many needs today.  The problem is we haven’t changed the way we think about healthcare in the US.  We say we want a national health care program, but many people today, refuse to use the public health system available now.There are many clinics that operate on a sliding fee scale. I use one for my medical care. I have purchased a hospitalization plan in the event of hospitalization.  I am self employed selling health insurance. I could not afford a plan similar to the major medical plan provided by my last employer. So I have designed one for myself which includes the public health system in my area.  If people are not willing to use the public health system now, what makes you think they will in the future? We have a system. Promote it,fund it,use it.  Why won’t you concentrate on that instead of trying to destroy it. Build on what we have now and make it better.

by Chandra Martin - 07/08/08

Hi Chandra,

Thank you for your comment. If you read our principles, we are not in favor of eliminating systems that work, but we are in favor of improving systems so that everyone can get quality, affordable health care. Unfortunately, 47 million Americans do have health care, so the over all system is broken. Please read our principles at this link:http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/content/statement_of_common_purpose

Thanks again for your comment and I am glad that you are working to provide health care to people who need it.

by Levana - 07/08/08

There is only one way to have health care for all and that is SINGLE PAYER which is what our
western allies all enjoy.  The for-profit insurance companies are the cause of our present
mess and only when “medicare for all” through single payer comes about will we get real
universal health care, not phony promises.

by Joan Sage - 07/08/08

I was very much with you until this paragraph in your statement of common purpose:

“To the extent that employers contribute to the cost of health coverage, those payments should be related to employee wages rather than on a per-employee basis.”

Doesn’t that conflict with a mission of inclusive, equitable health care for all, including your own goal of “Health care coverage with out-of-pocket costs including premiums, co-pays and deductibles that are based on a family’s ability to pay for health care and without limits on payments for covered services.”?  Can you reconcile this for me please?  Thanks.

by Carmelita - 07/08/08

This country needs mandatory health care for all citizens.  We do not need health insurance!  Health care and health insurance are two different concepts that have been confused and interchanged, probably quite intentionally by the insurance industry. 

Any system that allows exclusions or ‘premium enhancements’ for pre-existing conditions or health care determinations to be influenced by any third party is simply unacceptable.  Health care matters rightfully belong solely between patients and their medical providers.  For these reasons, our current model of health insurance will not adequately address the needs of our citizenry.  Insurance companies are in the business of making a profit, not providing health care.  Sadly, these two goals are in conflict with each other and can never be compatible.  (A prime example is the fact that health maintenance is not covered under many typical health insurance policies.  Who benefits from that?)

It is incumbent upon our President and Congress to design and implement a system whereby every person will receive health care for all their needs—preferably by the provider(s) of their choice—and the providers of those services will be fairly compensated.  This is no easy task given the influence of the insurance industry, but it must be done so that Americans may have adequate health maintenance and treatment for any and all conditions that could not otherwise be prevented.  We deserve to be healthy and out from under the tyranny of insurance companies.

by Joa Dattilo - 07/08/08

It was suggested by my Union, AFSCME, that I sign this petition, so I have been reviewing the website for information about this effort.  While I agree this would be a great solution to the healthcare crisis, I have not seen the proposal for the funding needed to accomplish this.  Would you please provide a link to that information?  I am unable to commit to this effort, and will withhold comment on the expenditure of $40 M for an ad campaign, until I can review all of the information.  I’m looking forward to finding an equitable solution for all.

by Barb - 07/08/08

Your plan is a distraction from what we really need - a single payer plan.  There is already a bill in the House of Representatives, H.R. 676, that lays out in detail what to do.  The economics have been worked out, and the money can be found to do this.  For more information, see <a href="http://www.pnhp.org>Physicians for a National Health Program.</a>

by Penny Anderson - 07/08/08

Would someone please explain what a ‘single payer’ plan is and how it differs from health insurance?

by Joa - 07/08/08

Oregonians And Their Physicians Part Company With Oregon Legislators On Health Care Reform

The Doctors’ Revolt
Doctors, the traditional advocates for the medical status quo, are increasingly in favor of major reforms to the U.S. health-care system.
ROGER BYBEE | July 1, 2008
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_doctors_revolt

Physicians like heart surgeon Dr. Dudley Johnson, a renowned pioneer in open-heart surgery, have concluded that only a single-payer system can restore patient care rather than profit as the core of the health-care system.

A poll published recently in the Annals of Health Research shows that 59 percent of U.S. doctors support a “single payer” plan that essentially eliminates the central role of private insurers.

Increasingly, doctors seem to be showing support for a single-payer system that would essentially eliminate for-profit insurers and curb the power of big provider chains.

A remarkable 64 percent of the Minnesota doctors surveyed in 2006 expressed support for a Canadian-style single-payer system that would drive insurers from their commanding role in the health system, reported Minnesota Medicine. The Minnesota poll aligned closely with a Massachusetts survey of doctors in 2004, which reflected 61 percent backing for single-payer, according to the Archives of Internal Medicine. Doctors’ views seem to be coming into closer alignment with those of the general public, of which 67 percent explicitly support a system like Canada’s or Britain’s.

Where only 18 percent of AMA members favored single-payer reform in 1992, the figure had soared to 42 percent by 2004.

Single-payer proved more popular than more modest measures like public programs to cover the uninsured, an individual mandate to purchase insurance, or an employer mandate, according to the AMA’s 2004 Advocacy Agenda Setting Survey. Among some subgroups of the AMA, support for single-payer was even stronger, reaching 58 percent among psychiatrists. (Pediatric cardiologists showed a 70 percent level of support for single-payer in a 2003 poll of physicians published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.)

Members of the American College of Physicians—the nation’s second-largest doctors’ organization with 124,000 internal-medicine physicians and related specialists—voted in December 2007 to endorse the single-payer idea.

Ironically, the commanding role of for-profit insurers and other corporate players has produced all the dire effects that doctors were warned about as the products of “socialized medicine,” delivered instead by a system that generates immense profits. “When doctors were worried about the government looking over their shoulder, now they actually have insurers second-guessing everything we do,” says Dr. Deborah Richter, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Doctors’ perceptions of the for-profit insurance industry—which ranks about as low as Big Tobacco in the general public’s eyes—have declined as premiums soar, bureaucratic problems multiply, and the ranks of the uninsured grow.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has noted, “Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by 1 percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing? ... They are working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don’t get it.”

So, 59% of U.S./Oregon doctors support a “single payer” plan that essentially eliminates the central role of private insurers and 100% of the Oregon legislature and every candidate running for the Oregon legislature support resolving Oregon’s moral and economic health care crisis by continuing to be enslaved by the failed private health insurance industry. There are no polls on how the million Oregonians who are uninsured each year, much less those with health insurance but not health care, would choose. However, it’s a very safe bet that they all would overwhelmingly if not unanimously reject continued domination by the failed private health insurance industry.

The 2009 Oregon legislature will be at work trying to fund SB329 with a Billion dollars in new taxes destined mostly for the corporate masters of the failed private health insurance industry and their lobbyists before Barack Obama takes the oath of office. Unfortunately, Obama’s national solution relies on the failed private health insurance industry model. It’s chances of passage at the end of four years that Obama promises are dubious at best. If enlightenment comes to him in the oval office and he comes to embrace the federal single payer solution, HR 676, http://www.hr676.org/, then he will be on the right track.

If you are one of the 59% of Oregon doctors that want to restore patient care rather than profit as the core of the health-care system in our state then it’s time for you to speak up for A. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill. THERE ARE NO OTHER VIABLE CHOICES ON THE PUBLIC TABLE IN OREGON.

A. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill (Which involves no new taxes, will reduce public institutional expenditures for health insurance by 20% and provides equality of health care for public employees and citizens without relying on the failed private health insurance industry and virtually no physician paperwork.)

B. Senate Bill 329 (Which, according to Representative Mitch Greenlick, will cost an additional Billion dollars in taxes and relies on the failed private health insurance industry model assuring continued unsustainable escalation of public institutional health insurance contributions. The complexity of this bill will assure that health care professionals will be spending even more time with paperwork than patients.)

C. Maintain the status quo.

Oregon doctors, if you don’t write out a prescription for a new treatment very soon then your patients and your state will just keep getting sicker and sicker and sicker and ...

Primum non nocere, “First, do no harm.” Your silent intervention in support of the failed private health insurance industry is doing harm.

Good luck and good health.

Richard Ellmyer
Oregon Community Health Care Bill author and project champion
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses.
Writer/Publisher - Oregon Health Watchers - Published on the Internet (http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html) and distributed to thousands of readers interested in public health care policy in Oregon.

by Richard Ellmyer - 07/08/08

The medical insurance industry is not the answer, it is the problem.  Good health care is expensive and there is no legitimate reason to put a third of health care dollars into the pockets of the medical insurance industry which is charging the highest possible premiums for the lowest possible coverage which is often denied.  As a majority of doctors now acknowledge, single payer national health care for all is the answer.  It is high time that we as a nation do what is right.

by John Mullen - 07/08/08

all other nations considered firstworld, and many second world countries have had national health care for decades; Japan, Korea, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, many eastern block countries and some middle eastern countries so whay is the problem in the US.

It is time the US stopped being of the rich, for the rich by the rich and started caring for its own people instead of running around helping other countries to get special treatment for putting in factories and depleting foreign environments for our wealthy.

We’ve built shelters, retirement homes (Yes, army corp of engineers), transportation, and hospitals for other countries but have never addressed the needs of US citizens. It is time all that changed.

by ds evans - 07/08/08

Insurance is “the law of large numbers”. Simply put, the solution to the Health Care Crisis is National insurance companies. How many Blue Cross - Blue Shield companies are there in America, 50?

Move the regulation of Insurance, of all types, to the National level as we did with commercial banks and legislatively remove the ability to ‘underwrite’ (read ‘discriminate’ here please) and we would have out National system with ‘competition’.

If the only way to reduce the ‘average’ claim cost was to write more policies then the new ‘national’ insurance companies would attempt to sign up as many policy payers as possible! Competition would keep the price down. That is the goal. Who pays the policy premium is another topic.

If the goal is to provide insurance to every citizen then this is the only American way.

I would never support the socialist concept of only a government payer. I would even say that to make this solution more viable, the US government should contract with these new national companies to take over Medicare/Medicaid. The money we save on the bureaucracy reduction alone would most likely fund the coverage for those citizens who need help the most.

Insurance professional over 30 years, thanks for being there and providing a forum. NJ Quinn

by N J Quinn - 07/09/08