ENGLISH FOR CONGRESS POSITION PAPER (Revised January 2012)

National Healthcare

The existing healthcare "non-system" in this country is hopelessly dysfunctional, extremely inefficient and wasteful, and cannot be salvaged.  Profit-driven healthcare has become greed-prevalent healthcare with massive consumer fraud being legally perpetuated upon subscribers to health insurance plans.   Many claimants for benefits found out after years of paying premiums that "their particular medical condition was not covered" because of exclusions contained in the fine print of their health insurance policies.  Thirty percent of total healthcare costs were consumed by health insurance plans and health provider administrative expenses.  These expenses amount to about $700 Billion annually, an amount that exceeds the current national defense budget plus some of the cost of the Afghanistan war.  Some of the former abuses have been banned by recent legislation by the Affordable Health Care Act, with provider overhead expenses now being limited to 15% of future costs, but the United States will still spend a higher percentage of its Gross Domestic Product for health care than any other nation.  In contrast, the Canadian system covers everyone and costs about half as much of their Gross Domestic Product to maintain and operate.

The Federal Medicare program has become a vast trough of uncontrolled price gouging by health care providers at the taxpayers’ expense.  The Prescription Drug Benefit Program has no cost controls, prohibits importation of lower cost drugs from Canada, locks enrollees into 12 month contracts, but then permits the drug plans to change the terms of their benefits every 60 days.   One small family owned manufacturing company in the Midwest that I am familiar with pays health insurance premiums amounting to 50% of its payroll and has been prohibited by state law from pooling its workforce with that of other small employers to negotiate lower insurance premiums.  The Affordable Medical Care Act, which will force uninsured workers to buy health insurance, does not solve the escalating cost control problem.  It is another fatally flawed attempt to throw more money into a hopelessly inefficient and wasteful health care non-system because health insurance premiums will eventually escalate as Medicare providers’ fees have and also require huge additional annual budget (i.e. “Doc Fix”) supplements.  The current constitutional challenges by 26 state Attorneys General may result in the mandatory insurance purchase requirement being declared unconstitutional.  That finding would severely reduce anticipated revenue needed to finance the program and result in its cancellation.

The only workable permanent solution is to phase in a single payer Federal tax-supported Canadian-style health care system that covers everyone, eliminates the $700 Billion of resources wasted on needless administrative costs, and cost far less to operate than the present American "non-system" that simply doesn't work.  A designated portion of Federal budget revenues should be allocated to fund the single payer system.  It should begin by the Federal government covering the estimated 50 million uninsured and all persons now enrolled in Medicare and state Medicaid programs.  The Federal government also should fund and utilize surplus Veterans Administration and closed military base hospitals for providing all long-term catastrophic (over 30 days hospitalization) patient care.  Over the next ten years after the program is begun, single payer coverage should be gradually extended to the entire working population and its dependents as private insurance coverage is phased out.  The wealthy could still elect to pay extra for their own private "boutique" insurance coverage for treatment at separate upscale resort-styled health care facilities.  However, all residents would pay taxes to support the national health care system, just as they do now to support the public education system even though they or their dependents may never attend public schools.
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