Half the bankruptcies are from medical bills and this touches everyone and lessens the quality of our lives.
More and more, middle-class Americans are feeling everyday effects of our dysfunctional healthcare system; a system that restrains our mobility, our freedom to raise our families as we choose, and our opportunity to achieve our goals.
As a middle-class taxpayer, I would like to have my taxes increased in exchange for some of the same freedom and security that my European cousins have.
Why America Needs Healthcare For All (HFA):
1.Economic
a. From the New York Times, (02/14/05): "General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner Jr. called on corporate and government leaders to find "some serious medicine" for the nation's ailing health system. In a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, the auto executive, who is responsible for providing health insurance for more people than any other private employer in the nation, graphically detailed how rising medical bills are eating into his company's bottom line and ultimately threatening the viability of most U.S. firms."
b. Small and large businesses are forced to chose between operations in the US, with associated ballooning health insurance costs, and operations in foreign countries with no health insurance costs and lower wages - a factor in the increase in outsourcing good American jobs.
c. Anyone who wants to start a small business and employ others must wrestle with the volatility of the cost of healthcare insurance. Many may decide that the risks outweigh the benefits, thus we lose innovation and dampen entrepreneurship. With HFA, entrepreneurs and those already in business, relieved of the burden of covering employees, could hire more workers and devote more funding towards research and innovation.
d. Large corporations that do not provide affordable healthcare insurance to employees have an unfair competitive advantage against employers who do provide coverage. This drives out small, local businesses, depletes the community tax base, saps the vitality of small towns and increases urban blight.
e. The uninsured are increasingly using scarce public health resources and forgoing healthcare until more costly treatment is needed. Our hospitals and emergency rooms are forced to absorb losses and consequently cut back in their staffs and technology investments.
f. Over 50% of personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills and 75% of those are people who have health insurance. HFA would reduce the number of bankruptcies.
g. HFA would remove the motivation for drug companies to bombard us with advertisements, competing with `me-too' drugs. Therefore, the billions spent on marketing could be redirected to research and development of lifesaving drugs.
Plus, we would negotiate drug prices, like every other country.
2.Family Values = Valuing Families
a. As long as healthcare access is tied to employment, single parents and, increasingly, both parents in two-parent families are forced to work to provide healthcare insurance. With HFA, families would have the freedom to opt for a more low-key lifestyle, with one parent having the freedom to stay home with the children, without fear of losing access to healthcare. Even single parents would have the choice to save and take extended leave during important times in their children's lives, without worrying about maintaining healthcare coverage. For many parents, there is nothing more precious that time spent helping their children to thrive and become happy, successful adults.
b. Tragically, the number of abortions performed has increased since 2000. Abortion rates increase during times of economic downturn and job insecurity. Unfortunately, women of lesser economic means who do not have access to healthcare for themselves or their unborn child are less likely to choose life. To a woman - who maybe has a couple of children, whose husband has lost his job or left, who must work two jobs to feed her family - a pregnancy becomes a source of worry, not celebration. Our society should embrace life by giving motherhood an honored place. The first step is to make sure women can have safe and healthy pregnancies and that all babies are given an equal chance to be healthy.
c. Simply put: when Jesus instructed us to care for the sick - he meant everyone, not just those with healthcare insurance. We serve our God by assuring that even the least among us in our community have healthcare.
3.Security
a. "The expected rise in US healthcare spend from 2000 to 2005 will consume nearly ¼ of the nation's economic growth. Healthcare spending is 2.1 times the average in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan - countries that have a higher share of elderly and that cover all their citizens, as well."* This exploding healthcare spending is financed with borrowed money, borrowed from the central banks of Japan, China & the European Union. As our debt increases, our dollar is weakened and our economic security diminishes.
b. If defense spending reaches $504 billion in 2005, healthcare spending with still be 3.6 times that. Healthcare spending is now twice that of education spending. Our current level of healthcare spending acts as a drain on other vital functions of our society, weakening our economic security. Yet, as spending balloons, the quality of life factors, such as infant mortality and life expectancy, are not improving as compared with other industrialized countries.
4.Opportunity for all
a. President Bush has recently argued that his scheme to privatize Social Security will be of greater benefit to blacks because they have shorter life spans. From the Black Commentator (02/10/05): "In reality, the shorter life expectancy of African Americans is due to their poorer health status. According to a recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics, the overall mortality for African Americans was 31 percent higher than for whites in 2002. The report highlights that the age-adjusted death rates for African Americans exceeded those for whites by 41 percent for stroke, 30 percent for heart disease, 25 percent for cancer, and more than 750 percent for HIV/AIDS. Homicide was the leading cause of death among young black men, which contributed to their lower life expectancy. These health disparities are exacerbated by a lack of access to affordable, quality health care. Census Bureau figures show that twenty percent of African Americans were without health insurance in 2003 compared to only 11 percent of whites. Ironically, President Bush could help close these health disparities by leading the effort to change how health care is provided in this country."
HFA would help close the gap and eliminate these disparities by providing fair and equal access.
b. Our universities produce the best physicians in the world. They spend years training to make medical decisions that save lives and increase the quality and dignity of life. They should not have their decisions be subordinate to the profit-motivated decisions of insurance companies. With HFA, doctors are allowed to do what they do best and all consumers of healthcare profit.
c. Increasingly, healthcare insurance is playing a larger role when workers make employment or career decisions. HFA would give all workers, including those with chronic conditions, the freedom and opportunity to change jobs or change careers and negotiate wages without having to worry about coverage. This represents true `ownership society' versus the `you're on your own' plans currently on the table.
"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves it's children" (Dietrich Bonnhoeffer).
How moral is 11 million children without access to healthcare? Our children are as deserving of the privilege to healthcare as children in France, Canada, and Japan.
Everyone wins (except the insurance companies).
Innovative means to finance HFA exist now.* What is currently lacking appears to be the will of our elected representatives to truly serve the people and offer Healthcare For All as a solution to a wasteful and outdated healthcare system.
* Boston University School of Public Health; Health Costs Absorb One Quarter of Economic Growth, 2000-2005; 02/09/05
Boston U School of Public Health