ONE HEALTH CARE POLICY – INDIVISIBLE – WITH BENEFITS FOR ALL

[Demeter]

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_william__070128_one_health_care_poli.htm


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January 29, 2007

ONE HEALTH CARE POLICY – INDIVISIBLE – WITH BENEFITS FOR ALL

By William John Cox


Let's see, the minimum wage is now $5.15 an hour and Bush opposes any increase, so that's $206 per week, or $10,712 per year (before taxes). Assuming a two-income family and a $15,000 deduction, Bush wants them to purchase "available health care" by using the taxes saved by the deduction. Does he really think that low-income workers can buy their own insurance with what they have left over after securing shelter, food, clothing, transportation and other essentials for their family? Or is he just flapping his lips, mouthing the words rolling down the Teleprompter?... For the amount of money we spend, American citizens should be receiving the greatest health care in the world. At an average cost of $6,280 per person, health care eats up 16 percent of our national output and is double that of other developed countries.

Employee medical costs contribute to the high price we pay for all goods and services. For example, General Motors spends $1,500 on employee medical benefits for every car it manufactures. Because health insurers operate as near monopolies, they are able to raise rates at will, and the high prices charged by pharmaceutical companies are protected and encouraged by law. Health costs continue to spiral upward, and it is estimated that at the present rate of increase, health care may consume as much as 46 percent of our gross domestic product by 2050....Workers cannot bear the present weight of health care, much less take on more. The health care burden on the working and middle classes has resulted in a 23-fold increase in bankruptcy filings from 1980 to 2001, directly as a result of medical bills. Most of these filings have been by hard-working people who had medical coverage when they got sick and then lost it. Currently, about half of all bankruptcy filings in the United States occur because of health-related expenses.

Many of us have toiled as wage slaves for decades because we were assured that we would receive lifetime health benefits from our employers upon retirement. A 2004 survey revealed that ten percent of large private employers ended all subsidized health benefits for future retirees that year, and they were planning another 20 percent reduction over the next three years. At the same time, 71% of surveyed firms had increased retiree contributions to premiums in the past year, and 86% planned to increase such contributions within the next three years.

Since we are spending a greater percentage of our gross domestic product on health care than any other major industrialized nation, you would think we should have the best medical care in the world, but we don't. Other countries provide more doctors, nurses and hospital beds for their patients, and we suffer an infant mortality rate well above that of the other industrialized countries. Only Latvia, among the 33 industrialized nations, has a lower survival rate for infants. At the other end of life, we are in the 29th place in the World Health Organization's life expectancy rankings. We die earlier and spend more time disabled than the citizens of most other developed nations... we have evolved a medical delivery system that allows the private medical care and pharmaceutical industries to rob us when we are sick and injured, when we are the most vulnerable, with a gun to our heads, while they pick our pockets. These industries are among the most profitable in our free-market economy... Let us envision a better way to provide health care, one that supports the premise that every child requires equal access to nutrition, education, and health care if we are to ever achieve our potential as a society; one that allows every worker to retain the benefits of his or her labor; and one in which we decide as a matter of public policy that it is just as important for us to enjoy good health as it is to be free from a terrorist attack.

...

Rather than to naysay the possibility of effective national health care, envision the liberating effect such a project would have on American businesses. They would be finally freed from the cost of providing medical benefits to their employees and from the high cost of worker's compensation insurance....The birth of a national health care system would not result in the demise of private health care. We should be able to determine the average cost of national health care on an individual basis, and those taxpayers who opt out of the national health care system should be entitled to a tax deduction equal to the average cost.... the availability of high-quality health care is all too often dependent upon one's station in society. The wealthy and those we elect to represent us, including the president and the members of Congress, have access to medical care that many of us can only dream about. This is not right. All of us, particularly our children, must have the same opportunity to live life without pain and suffering for each of the days allotted to us by the Arbiter of Time.



Authors Website: http://www.thevoters.org

Authors Bio: William John Cox authored the Policy Manual of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Role of the Police in America for a National Advisory Commission during the Nixon administration. As a public interest, pro bono, attorney, he filed a class action lawsuit in 1979 petitioning the Supreme Court to order a National Policy Referendum; he investigated and successfully sued a group of radical right-wing organizations in 1981 that denied the Holocaust; and he arranged in 1991 for the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls. His recent book, You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is reviewed at http://www.yourenotstupid.com.

[aquart]

1. Worker's comp screws small businesses and part-time workers.

Many small businesses would be able to provide part-time jobs if workmen's comp didn't insist that part-timers be treated as full-timers. The solution no one wants but they get anyway? Off the books. With NOTHING paid into Social Security.