A Right for all Americans

In 2004, comprehensive healthcare remains a dream for vast portions of American society. 30 – 40 million of our fellow citizens have no access to health insurance, while millions more who have health insurance are burdened with ever increasing premiums, co-pays, cruelly restrictive formularies for prescription drugs, and HMO’s intruding on doctors/patient medical decisions in the interests of profit. The for-profit healthcare system in the United States is a failure. We, as a nation, must move away from our current situation of restricted care and skyrocketing prices, and toward a system of universal, comprehensive, effective, and affordable healthcare.

Goals and Principles of Action:

1. Access to comprehensive health care is a human right. It is the responsibility of society, through its government, to assure this right. Coverage should not be tied to employment. Private insurance firms' past record disqualifies them from a central role in managing health care.

2. The right to choose and change one's physician is fundamental to patient autonomy. Patients should be free to seek care from any licensed health care professional.

3. Pursuit of corporate profit and personal fortune have no place in caregiving and they create enormous waste. The U.S. already spends enough to provide comprehensive health care to all Americans with no increase in total costs. However, the vast health care resources now squandered on bureaucracy (mostly due to efforts to divert costs to other payers or onto patients themselves), profits, marketing, and useless or even harmful medical interventions must be shifted to needed care.

4. In a democracy, the public should set overall health policies. Personal medical decisions must be made by patients with their caregivers, not by corporate or government bureaucrats.

Benefits of Universal Healthcare:

1. Improved health for all Americans: Care would no longer be linked to employer sponsored plans or the ability to afford high insurance premiums. Universal access to preventative healthcare, wellness information, and regular checkups for all citizens will greatly reduce illness aggravated by lack of care.

2. Direct economic benefit for business, small and large: In Canada, the divisions of GM and Ford Motors based there wholeheartedly endorse their single-payer universal healthcare system. Why? New workes report to the job healthy, and workers who need healthcare on the job do not put a burden on the profit margin by incurring health costs to be paid directly by the company.

3. Direct economic benefit for all Americans: Access to high quality healthcare, regardless of ability to pay will directly benefit by having better health, fewer sick days away from work, and greater personal economic stability without the threat of catastophic health care costs.

4. Real control over soaring medical costs: with the elimination of profit and mulitiple health care companies squandering health care funds, the overall cost of health care will decrease on a per capita basis. With all citizens in the same pool of participants, maximum discounting can be achieved from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Plan of Action:

The progression towards Universal Healthcare will, by neccessity, be an incremental process. Political and social behavior will have to gradually be reoriented to an egalitarian, non-profit model of health care distribution and financing. To accomplish this, we will require short term and long term plans. Short Term: Coordinate collective benefits with existing governmental health agencies: Medicare, Department of Veterans affairs, etc. This span of time will last approximately 5 years. All uninsured, elderly, and veterans will be allowed to collectively bargain via government agencies with pharmaceutical companies for favorable drug costs. Generally, these agencies have already succeeded in negotiating deep discounts with drug companies for their existing constituencies. By adding participants to the various agencies, the pool of consumers expands, thus increasing the depth of discounts to be received. Initial conversion to non-profit healthcare: The government will begin a coordinated buy-out of failing for-profit hospitals. Funding will be provided in the form of low interest or no interest loans to qualified non-profit medical groups to assume local operation of the new facilities. All uninsured, elderly, and veterans will receive a government issued medical card to be used at such facilities. Long Term: Conversion of all care providers: hospitals, clinics, home care, long term care facilties, mental health facilities to national health care funding. Medical facilities will be owned and operated by not for profit organizations, employ their own staff, and run their own day to day affairs. They will receive a global funding budget for their fixed costs: building, maintenence, salaries, etc. Said organizations will bill all patient services (exams, perscriptions, operations, etc) to the national health agency for payment at an fixed rate. Medical care will only be available through the national health system. Private hospitals and clinics will not be allowed to duplicate the functions of the national system. No two-tier situations will be allowed. Private clinics will only be allowed to provide non-medically neccessary procedures, ie elective cosmetic surgury, etc.

Considerations will have to be given to:

Compensating investors of privately owned hospitals converted to non-profit status Continual analysis of the health needs of the citizenry to assure that needs are being met. Retraining and placement programs for administrative staff no longer needed to administer the labyrinth of private HMO’s, insurance companies, and other payment sources. Continual needs analysis to allow adequate capital investment to meet growing medical needs. Possible tax increases in the progressive income tax to fund the national health system. Adequate medical school educational opportunities and coordination of research programs to benefit the citizenry in general, instead of being controlled by the profit motive.