Health Care For America Now

I have been working for the Lucas County Department of Job and Family Services for 12 years.  I have Multiple Sclerosis, but have been healthy enough to work full time and go to grad school because of my health care. Beginning in June 2008, my employer changed the formulary on my prescription drugs and my out of pocket expense so far this month went up to $1500. I work and live in Ohio and only make $1600 per month working. I put my medicine on credit cards this month, but I don’t know how I’m gonna pay for my medicine next month.  I work hard and contribute to society. However, I do not know how much longer I will stay healthy without my medication.  I have never been a proponent of a national health care system in the past, but I never thought a full time employee in the United States would have to go without life sustaining medication, especially a local government employee. If its this bad for me, it has to be much worse for others.

by Wendy Hammer - 07/09/08

The rhetoric around this issue is fascinating. I’m unable to respond to the choice because it’s too arbitrary.

The assumption that the government is capable of fixing this is fundamentally wrong; the government created the problem in the first place. I object strenously to the concept that the insurance companies are the smoking gun creating the problem. History has proven that free entreprise tends to work. History has also proven that the government tends muck up whatever it gets involved in.

Medicare/Medicaid eliminated (or minimized)private parties as customers… now those programs set the standard and I - as a private payer - have almost no role in even my own health care. The double irony is that I pay sometimes four to five times the price Medicare does for the same procedures. So I pay for others health care through taxes and then supplement it further by paying more!

So we have a socialist concept in practice, driving the insurance companies and the patients out of the program. The system we have is NOT designed for the rich, it is designed for the poor. Of course as we continue down this path we’ll all end up being poor so maybe it will work in the end.

by Walter B - 07/09/08

59% of doctors agree.  Single-payer is the way to go.  Support 676.  Medicare is popular- expand it to everyone.  Per-capita, we’re the richest country in the world, we’ll easily find the money when we find our backbone.  It’ll be at least 30% cheaper than what we’re paying now.

by Single-Payer is Popular - 07/09/08

Some of you have asked about our plan to cover all Americans. At this point we are not endorsing any specific plans. We have a set of principles that we are advocating for. We will endorse any plan that meets these principles. You can read the principles here: http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/content/statement_of_common_purpose

We would support any plan that meets these principles. Once the new Congress and President begin in 2009, there will be many options of how to solve the problem, single payer plans, a mix of public and private plans, extensions of some current programs, or other options. We want for everyone to agree to the principles and then we can all pick the best option within the framework of these principles. We want for everyone to have the health care they need.

Thank you for all of your open and honest debate.

Levana Layendecker
Director of Online Campaigns

by Levana Layendecker - 07/09/08

I am finally happy to see that other people out there like myself that cannot afford Health Insurance and someone finally stepped up and are willing to help.
My husband is self employed and I am in the (Professional)Health Field- you would think that I would have great insurance- but I don’t—I work full-time and If I would carry Insurance for my whole family(4 of us and all healthy, past and present) It would cost me $850 a month. I have 2 teenagers and trying to make ends met is hard enough. I worry about if anything should happen—

by Name Unknown - 07/09/08

Thanks. As a 66 year old retiree on Medicare and a near worthless insurance policies from United Healthcare and Caremark, I with most other individuals that I know need all the help we can get to get the money grubbers out of the healthcare business. Insurance companies just add a layer of unneeded bureaucacy to an overly bureacratic medical system that has more waste built in to the process than the garbage dump. What other industry requires seperate companies with dedicated specialists just to render billing that is impossible to decipher by anyone without the code book. We don’t need insurance companies that wrote the codes, we need to simplify the process so that most families can figure it out. And we need to penalize the people that overbill because they can get away with it in the present system. That includes the crooks that take advantage of the broken system we have and those among us with the most need for help that can’t figure it out anymore.
I’m tired of politicians, blowhards and biased newscasters that don’t tell us the truth. Who are they kidding when we rank twenty something among leading industrialized societies in any measure of healthcare. Don’t tell me we’ve got it better than the rest of the world. This world is too small today to keep even the most stupid person in the dark forever.

by W. K. MacAllister - 07/09/08

I have actually advocated for affordable, accessible quality health care for decades, and with my blog, have addressed issues for over a year.  I applaud this consumer effort and recommend that consumers step up the game in terms of clarity of goals and lobbying efforts.  Wanting “universal” health care is not enough, just look at the AMA website (for doctor advocacy) and the AHIP website (for health insurer advocacy).  These organized and well-funded and very specific efforts have helped produce and perpetuate the “crisis” of today. 

As consumers we know what we want, I have always called it AAQT (ACCESS, AFFORDABILITY QUALITY TACTICS for health services), but as consumers we seem easily distracted.  For instance, the shift away from true insurance (policies covering RISK of the cost of illness and need for medical services) to endless “preventive” options so that people are distracted from exclusions, and limitations imposed by health insurers for needed medical services because they get the free checkup every year…dollars and cents, this is a bad choice.  We don’t need health insurance to cover finite costs, but the endless cost of treating medical events. 

1) Health insurance is only useful if our premiums are affordable and cover the FINANCIAL RISK of obtaining needed medical care. We have long forgotten that health insurance is our current tool in helping pay for needed medical services, if this tool fails because health insurers are bankers (holding funds and administering funds from health savings accounts), or are functioning as “educators” where they have nanny companies asking you whether you are eating right (which the large insurers contract with third parties for now), or as “policy” makers advocating for profits from finite events with predictable costs (eg checkups and screenings) in EXCHANGE for true health insurance (how many oncologists are parts of plans vs how many dieticians, how many cardiologists, how are the deductibles, co-pays on those coverages?) then we end up with what we have today…the need for additional INSURANCE POLICIES to cover the risk of illness.

2) The problem is NOT solved from the bottom up but from the MIDDLE OUT:  Political goals (those of politicians) have addressed the gross numbers of UNINSURED.  Like the sub-prime crisis in the mortgage industry, problems start in the middle…it was not those in the subprime market who ultimately brought down housing it was the impact of sketchy loans on the middle class who ended up unable to afford their mortgage payments.  Similarly, addressing the uninsured will not impact the under-insured majority BUT fighting for cost controls on medical services and insurance products that actually cover risk of illness WILL help the uninsured because the COST of insurance and health services will come down.

3) MORE INSURANCE is NOT the answer:  The push for long term care insurance is on its way because of legislation that provides for funding such policies in conjunction with other insurance products.  The most important lesson of this push will be that MORE insurance is not the answer because insurance companies seeking profit from increased premiums know only one way of increasing profits, squeeze the consumer for higher premiums, additional premiums, higher co-pays, higher deductibles, additional exclusions, and longer waiting periods for coverages of chronic disease.  We have YET to see anyone publicly disclose the recent study by the INSURANCE industry that explains that less than HALF of any premium dollar is actually USED to pay for medical services (utilization rate).  We are a carrot and a stick economy, here’s insurance (the carrot), you get sick, you’re not covered (the stick) BUT you can buy an additional policy to help cover you (carrot) BUT next year it will cost you more or you’ll have to shop around because now you have a history (STICK).  Cost controls on health services providers and health insurers MUST be part of the equation.

4) Pay attention to your legislators:  Our local (state) representatives may not be big enough to fight national or even worldwide insurance companies, but these companies are licensed by each state.  Websites by governors and insurance commissioners are laughable, a cartoon of a big thumbs up in the middle of wreckage, reminiscent of “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” 

Again look at the websites for doctors and insurance company lobbyists. Specificity, deception (we want you to save money this way), relentless media blitz….
There’s a lot of work to do, but it begins with clarity:  Every change measured against goals, access, affordability and quality medical services.

by conoutofconsumer - 07/10/08

Single-payer health care for all. Anything else is destined to fail.

by sidney - 07/10/08

This is ridiculous. What about Single-Payer? Why is that off the table? This is a typical top-down solution, and I guarantee that if it gets passed, it will be roundly denounced by every progressive with half a brain.

Please fight for the only real solution - single-payer, government health care.

by Matthew Cross - 07/10/08

we simply must have single payer instituted in this country to make us healthy.

Single payer refers to a way of financing health care, which includes both
the collection of money for health care and reimbursement of providers for
health care costs.  In a single payer system, both the collection of funds and the
reimbursement are the responsibility of one entity: the government.  The government
collects funds from individuals and businesses, mainly in the form of taxes, and the
government reimburses providers for health care services delivered to individuals
enrolled in the public health insurance program.
In the United States, there are multiple payers, not a single payer.  The collection of
money for health care is a joint responsibility of the private insurance industry, which
collects premiums and other payments from individuals and businesses, and the
government, which collects taxes from individuals and businesses.  Similarly,
reimbursement responsibilities fall on both the private insurance industry, which
reimburses providers for health care services delivered to privately insured individuals,
and the government, which reimburses providers for health care services delivered to
publicly insured individuals (e.g. people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, or the
VA).
Denmark, Sweden, and Canada are example of countries with single payer financing of
health care.  There is also a single payer system in America: the Medicare program,
which is the health insurance program for almost every American aged 65 and over.  A
provider taking care of a Medicare patient has only one entity to bill: the government. 
In contrast, a provider has multiple entities to bill when dealing with privately insured
individuals due to the large number of private insurance companies in America.
Importantly, the term “single payer” is different from “socialized medicine” and
“universal health care.”  Socialized medicine refers to a system like the National
Health Service of the U.K., in which the mechanisms of delivery of health
care are owned by the government.  That is, the government owns the health care
facilities and physicians work for the government.  In contrast, the mechanisms of
delivery of health care in a single payer system are not necessarily owned by the
government.  Physicians can be either in private practice or public practice, and
hospitals can be both publicly or privately owned.  In Canada, for example, physicians
are predominantly in private practice, while hospitals are both public and private.  As
another example, American physicians and hospitals that take care of Medicare
patients are usually private.  Single payer does not specify a health care delivery
mechanism; it specifies a health care financing mechanism.
The term “universal health care”, in a general sense, refers to providing every citizen of
a country with health insurance.  Although universal health care connotes a national
public insurance program to some people, there are in reality a variety of ways of
achieving universal health care, some of which are predominantly public, and others of
which use a mixture of public and private elements.  Single payer is one way of
achieving universal health care

by JY - 07/10/08

No more “Murder by Spreadsheet.”  We want real reform - HR-676.

This organization is disheartening to those of us who have been working for real health care reform - real Universal Single Payer Health Care like every other industrialized nation has.  You even steal a name we grassroots folks have been working under - Healthcare - NOW! [http://www.healthcare-now.org/]

Friends, you are wrong with the direction you are taking and if you set us back another decade, you will be helping kill more fellow citizens.

I’d tell you how absolutely sick it is to see this - except cancer and no insurance has already done that.

by Claudia - 07/10/08

I just want to point out to some of the commmenters that a properly designed single payer plan can fit within our principles, but it’s not the only approach that can. Many of the organizations that are members of HCAN support single-payer but it’s not the only approach they support. So, we would be happy to have you as part of our work.

We welcome groups to join who agree with our principles and also understand that our campaign is about focusing on principles and the great divide in approaches to reform, embodied by our call to tell us Which Side Our You On?

by Levana - 07/10/08