Health Care A Right Of Citizenship
The United States does not offer the best health care but it certainly is expensive. It is the only nation in the industrialized world that does not have health care as a right of citizenship.
The World Health Organization ranked the United States, which calls itself a superpower, 37th in its 2000 international comparison of the health systems of member nations.
US health care coverage is a private, market driven insurance based on deregulated or unregulated markets with supply and demand, maximum profitability, not health care, the driving force. This system is for the healthy, not those who get sick. The sick are rejected or ejected from this program. It is a money wasting system where nearly 1/3 of premiums go to administrative costs like marketing and advertising, claims processing, etc.
Meanwhile, another standard of this system, employer provided health care insurance, is breaking down with fewer employers offering health care. Premiums are increasingly prohibitive for the typical American worker and employer. Almost 50 million Americans are without health care coverage and 18,000 die each year because they lack that coverage.
A majority of Americans are willing to pay more in taxes to have the federal government guarantee health care coverage for everyone.
However, Democratic presidential candidates Clinton, Edwards and Obama's plans for health care reform resemble ice cream on cow pies, building on a collapsing system, throwing some money around, or competing with current private insurance while keeping fingers crossed that the competition will work.
What's wrong with this kind of competition? As Dennis Kucinich, the only single-payer advocate among the presidential candidates, says,
"If you have competition between insurance companies, everyone knows what happens. That doesn’t drive down costs, it drives up profits. That’s a fact. If you say you’re going to give people a choice, either be on a private plan or be with the government, the private companies start cherry picking the people in the best health, and you end up with adverse selection. The most medically compromised end up on programs that the government is paying for, and then the government program starts to go down. You end up in an insurance death spiral.
Even the insurance companies are for universal health care if the government is subsidizing them. What a deal that is for the insurance companies, but what a rotten deal for the American people. People are losing their homes because they can’t pay the doctor bills. And so what it ultimately comes down to is who has the courage and the willingness to take a stand and can reach out to the American people and to say we’re going to change this."
Health reform built on private insurance doesn't work. Ask physicians in Massachusetts where health coverage is mandated of individuals who must buy their own with very little help for the struggling middle class. Anyone without insurance is fined. That it costs too much and delivers too little doesn't matter. However, health institutions in the state and insurance companies are happy.
The AFL-CIO sees the dramatic increase in health premiums for workers and employers as further evidence of a broken health system. That is why more than 350 union locals endorse HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act (Medicare for All) as do organizations such as HealthCare-NOW and Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHP).
Which is why it is dismaying that AFL-CIO leaders don't seem to be supporting this legislation, but instead promote Illinois' state plan, another flawed employer based reform; again, ice cream on cow pies. According to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, AFL-CIO leadership appears to be attempting to obstruct or extinguish rank and file membership's support for HR 626.
Mokhiber writes, "Sweeney and leaders of the SEIU, UFCW, Bricklayers, Laborers, and Teamsters - along with DLA Piper partner and former Congressman Dick Gephardt - yesterday put their stamp of approval on a employer-based state health insurance reform plan by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D)."
Sweeney and upper echelon union pals along with Gebhardt all approve of Blagojevich's regressive, band-aid plan to fund health insurance, rather than HR 626 universal single-payer coverage which is similar to those plans that have been working successfully for so many decades in other industrialized nations.
Recall that former U.S. Congressional representative Blagojevich and former House minority leader Gebhardt, now a lobbyist assisting the Republic of Turkey with its genocide denial campaign, were among the 81 House members who voted in 2002 to authorize Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq. Look how well that turned out.
These union leaders unfortunately resemble the current Democrat leadership in the House and Senate. They ignore, dismiss, or actively work against their rank and file/base. Since all are elected officials, they may discover that dissing their base, to whom they are accountable not vice versa, might just get them "unelected."
The World Health Organization ranked the United States, which calls itself a superpower, 37th in its 2000 international comparison of the health systems of member nations.
US health care coverage is a private, market driven insurance based on deregulated or unregulated markets with supply and demand, maximum profitability, not health care, the driving force. This system is for the healthy, not those who get sick. The sick are rejected or ejected from this program. It is a money wasting system where nearly 1/3 of premiums go to administrative costs like marketing and advertising, claims processing, etc.
Meanwhile, another standard of this system, employer provided health care insurance, is breaking down with fewer employers offering health care. Premiums are increasingly prohibitive for the typical American worker and employer. Almost 50 million Americans are without health care coverage and 18,000 die each year because they lack that coverage.
A majority of Americans are willing to pay more in taxes to have the federal government guarantee health care coverage for everyone.
However, Democratic presidential candidates Clinton, Edwards and Obama's plans for health care reform resemble ice cream on cow pies, building on a collapsing system, throwing some money around, or competing with current private insurance while keeping fingers crossed that the competition will work.
What's wrong with this kind of competition? As Dennis Kucinich, the only single-payer advocate among the presidential candidates, says,
"If you have competition between insurance companies, everyone knows what happens. That doesn’t drive down costs, it drives up profits. That’s a fact. If you say you’re going to give people a choice, either be on a private plan or be with the government, the private companies start cherry picking the people in the best health, and you end up with adverse selection. The most medically compromised end up on programs that the government is paying for, and then the government program starts to go down. You end up in an insurance death spiral.
Even the insurance companies are for universal health care if the government is subsidizing them. What a deal that is for the insurance companies, but what a rotten deal for the American people. People are losing their homes because they can’t pay the doctor bills. And so what it ultimately comes down to is who has the courage and the willingness to take a stand and can reach out to the American people and to say we’re going to change this."
Health reform built on private insurance doesn't work. Ask physicians in Massachusetts where health coverage is mandated of individuals who must buy their own with very little help for the struggling middle class. Anyone without insurance is fined. That it costs too much and delivers too little doesn't matter. However, health institutions in the state and insurance companies are happy.
The AFL-CIO sees the dramatic increase in health premiums for workers and employers as further evidence of a broken health system. That is why more than 350 union locals endorse HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act (Medicare for All) as do organizations such as HealthCare-NOW and Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHP).
Which is why it is dismaying that AFL-CIO leaders don't seem to be supporting this legislation, but instead promote Illinois' state plan, another flawed employer based reform; again, ice cream on cow pies. According to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, AFL-CIO leadership appears to be attempting to obstruct or extinguish rank and file membership's support for HR 626.
Mokhiber writes, "Sweeney and leaders of the SEIU, UFCW, Bricklayers, Laborers, and Teamsters - along with DLA Piper partner and former Congressman Dick Gephardt - yesterday put their stamp of approval on a employer-based state health insurance reform plan by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D)."
Sweeney and upper echelon union pals along with Gebhardt all approve of Blagojevich's regressive, band-aid plan to fund health insurance, rather than HR 626 universal single-payer coverage which is similar to those plans that have been working successfully for so many decades in other industrialized nations.
Recall that former U.S. Congressional representative Blagojevich and former House minority leader Gebhardt, now a lobbyist assisting the Republic of Turkey with its genocide denial campaign, were among the 81 House members who voted in 2002 to authorize Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq. Look how well that turned out.
These union leaders unfortunately resemble the current Democrat leadership in the House and Senate. They ignore, dismiss, or actively work against their rank and file/base. Since all are elected officials, they may discover that dissing their base, to whom they are accountable not vice versa, might just get them "unelected."
Posted by ProgressiveDem at 11/12/2007 1:36 PM 
Categories: labor, Democratic Party, Health Care, Clinton, Obama
Categories: labor, Democratic Party, Health Care, Clinton, Obama
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