Wanna really scare the establishment. Here is your chance. That’s right I am not going to just complain this time, I am going to ask you to take action. This is an experiment in democracy. It involves presenting the same or similar bill in multiple counties throughout the US to achieve the same end—health care for all.
Well today is the day. This is the bill I have been promising you. This bill was created by converging several bills including HR 1200, HR 676, and HB 2677 (in Arizona). The bill is made for a county initiative.
Let’s face it. The Congress and the White House have been hijacked by the insurance industry. (And a lot of other industries as well.) The result is that we have lost our democracy. That’s right I no longer believe that there is any kind of functional democracy in the US. So much so that during one of the Presidential debates Hillary Clinton stood up in front of the American people and told them that the insurance industry "must be on board" before we can change the system. There is essentially no way that a comprehensive, universal health care bill can pass at the federal level with this going on.
But local initiatives are voted on by the people, not be representatives that have already been bought. Seventy five percent of the American people say that they want universal, comprehensive health care. In fact a Harris Poll in August showed that the American people rate insurance companies just above oil companies and the tobacco industry. Insurance companies may have bought our politicians but they forgot to win the hearts and minds of the American people. This initiative should be an easy sell to the people of your local county.
Local health care initiatives do have some drawbacks, though. A county can not as far as I know collect payroll taxes. Thus I present this as a voluntary action and created "premiums" to pay for the health care. This also takes the wind out of the main insurance industry argument against the bill--that this is mandatory socialized medicine. It is not. I have created what amounts to a County run health insurance agency. The advantage of doing that is decreasing the overhead from 15-27% to 3-7% and a larger insurance pool both of which should make the rates drop substantially. Additionally, the care should be more responsive to the local community. If preventative health programs are initiated as they are in Scandinavia then the health care cost and other community social safety net program costs should eventually drop even further.
Before you get into reading all 60 pages of the bill let me tell you that you can probably get a pretty good overall picture of the bill by reading the section headers and the comments that I embedded in the bill. (They are in brackets [ ] and purple.) You will need Word to open the file. If you do not have Word or if another document style would work better let me know in comments or e-mail. You may have guested that I am not very internet savvy but I will see what I can do.
Those of you who are neurotic enough to read all of this—I really appreciate you. Please tell me about any correction that need to be made. Also if you have any experience writing legislation—great! Because I do not have any. Please give me feedback.
Before I give you the bill lets review what we discovered on our world tour:
1.) More money thrown at health care does not necessarily create a better system. The system needs to be well designed and operated fairly.
2.) The system must be fair to the old. These people have contributed to society their whole lives and deserve our care at the end of their lives.
3.) The poor should not fall below a certain basic level of care.
4.) It is OK for the rich to get slightly better care for their money, but not too much better.
5.) Gatekeepers do not matter. Countries with strong gatekeepers pay no more or less for their health care than more free wheeling countries.
6.) Waiting lines for care increase the cost and decrease satisfaction.
7.) Thank God for physical therapists because they improve the lot of many people’s lives.
8.) Prevention pays for itself. In fact prevention is cost effective.
9.) Mental health care should start at birth and continue throughout life. Mental health care does not just include the severely mentally ill. It also includes how people interact with each other and developing healthy relationships and maximizing every person’s abilities.
10.) Community health is not even discussed in the US but plays a critical role in the all our lives and in the cost of living in our communities. It is extremely expensive when neglected.
11.) Health care should be under local control with local money. The federal governments role should be to even the playing field and assuring that there is no discrimination. Also, large programs to improve the health of the entire nation should be controlled and initiated by the federal government but run by local governments. This improves the satisfaction of population with the system and makes it more responsive to the population.
12.) Local governments should have their health care networked with other local governments to keep the administrative costs low and provide the ability to move the system as a whole in one direction when necessary.
13.) Health care facilities should be accessible and near by. Variety in health care centers is good for the system overall.
14.) Pure socialism and pure capitalism do not provide the best care. The best care is a combination of both systems. Cooperative capitalism is better than feudal capitalism.
About this Initiative:
Not all of these criteria are addressed in my health care initiative. The bill is designed to create an entity that can then address these issues. Much of the above work would have to be done by the Board of Directors of such an entity. This bill is only a first step.
This draft is meant for review. It is not yet ready in my opinion to be downloaded and used as an initiative in your own county, yet.
My intention was to let people comment on the draft and start a conversation about what should be changed and why. If you make a suggestion please tell me why you think the suggestion would work better this way. I will be off this weekend and so I will try to log on every even hour (ie 8am, 10 am etc. Arizona time) on Sat and Sun (during daylight hours) to answer any questions of for more immediate chat. To discuss a certain portion of the bill please reference the page number and the position on the page. Block quotes would also be helpful. So without further fanfare here is the bill.
The following link is to a Word document that contains the Initiative. It has been scanned by Semantic for viruses:
Dr A’s Initiaive
Other entries on this subject:
You are being Ripped Off
Health Care Tour I: Canada, England, France
Health Care Tour II: Japan, Spain, Italy
Health Care Tour III: Germany, Denmark
Health Care Tour IV: Scandinavia
France Revisited