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To Mrs. Clinton,
This comment is related to your call for voters to tell you what we want for health care when you appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" show this morning. I can't claim to speak for other voters, only myself, I voted for your husband back in 1996, when I first turned 18, and have voted Democratic ever since.
Well, let me start by saying that its good that you are asking the voters themselves for help on this issue, for it affects all of us, especially lower wage working families and the middle class. The first thing I think you need to do is, once you decide on a plan, be clear in what it involves for voters.
I believe, personally, that a single payer plan is the way to go, a "Medicare for all" plan, one that shift our health care system from a for-profit enterprise to a non-profit public service. The problem with plans like Edwards is that trying to keep the insurance companies around, and linking health care to employment ends up leading to duplicating the bureaucracy needed to deliver the financing needed, and increases the burden on already overburdened companies.
A single payer system is simpler, and because of this, cheaper to operate. If you wish to control costs, the easiest way to do this is to cut the administration down, for private insurance companies, about 30% of the money put in premiums is eaten up by administrative costs, compare this to Medicare, which, for all its faults, still is able to maintain an administrative cost of only about 3%. This could lead to a savings of millions, even billions of dollars a year in health care delivery.
In addition, the government should be able to negotiate drug prices at fair market value, openly, and emphasize the use of generics when possible. We need to focus on preventative medicine, encouraging citizens to go to the doctor for a simple checkup, because it shouldn't cost them 100 dollars for a single visit, a cost many families can ill afford, so they don't bother.
If we encourage this, then it will also reduce costs because, when people only see the doctor when something is wrong with them, then it ends up costing more money than catching diseases and conditions at the earliest possible diagnosis. This also leads to a bonus of better survivability for many individuals, and less time out of work, leading to better productivity.
Such a plan wouldn't need to limit choices in doctors, for, as long as the government would pay the costs, doctors will treat the patients. Allow for fair compensation related to the doctor's ability and specialization, if any, and there shouldn't be any problems in doctor choice.
In addition, you spread the risk pool to every single working American, which further reduces individual costs for those Americans and their families. You could market it as eliminating an expensive monthly premium, replacing it with a Medical tax that is less than a third of the cost of the premium, which puts more money in the pockets of working families so that they can contribute even more into the economy.
This is just my two cents.
With regards,
Donald McBee
Don't know if she'll read it, but what the hell. :)
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