ENGLISH FOR SENATE POSITION PAPER ON:

National Healthcare

The existing healthcare "non-system" in this country is hopelessly dysfunctional, extermely inefficent 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 only find out after years of paying premiums that "their particular medical condition is not covered" because of exclusions contained in the fine print of their health insurance policies.  Thirty percent of total healthcare costs are consumed by health insurance plans and health provider administrative expenses.  These expenses amount to about $600 Billion annually, an amount that exceeds the current national defense budget plus most of the costs of the Iraq and Afhanistan wars.  The United States spends a higher percentage of its Gross Domestic Product  for health care than any other nation, but almost 50 million people have no insurance and another 50 million have inadequate health insurance coverage. The number of uninsured increases by 800,000 persons every year while monthly health insurance premiums have doubled in the past ten years.  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 recently begun  Prescription Drug Benefit Program has no cost controls, prohibits importation of lower cost drugs from Canada, locks enrollees into12 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.  Recent proposals to force uninsured workers to buy health insurance by new state laws do not solve the escalating cost control problem and just are another attempt to throw more money into a hopelessly inefficient and wasteful health care non-system.

The only workable solution is to phase in a single payer Federal tax-supported Canadian-style health care system that covers everyone, eliminates the $600 Billion of resources wasted on needless administrative costs, and costs 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 almost 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 catastrohic (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 can still elect to pay extra for their own private "boutique" insurance coverage for treatment at separate upscale resort-styled health care facilities.  However, everyone 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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