Health care not a right, Koop says
The Deseret News
March 7, 2002
By Twila Van Leer
"Americans have no constitutional right to health care, but the perception is so strong that such care should be a basic right that the country is likely to have a socialized system sometime in the near future, Dr. C. Everett Koop said Thursday."
"Answering the question raised in the title of his talk, 'The Right to Health Care: Has the Time Come?' Koop had an emphatic 'no. The time never will come when health care is a right.'"
"Regardless, public polls have shown increasingly large numbers of Americans who believe health care should be a basic right, he said. 'And they think they should get health care as good as a millionaire gets.'"
"Koop urged those in the medical ranks to 'take the high road of professionalism,' to adopt the higher ethic of self-sacrifice... 'Do the right thing for those for whom health care is not yet a right.'"
<http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,375014476,00.html?textfield=Koop>http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,375014476,00.html?textfield=Koop
Comment: Is Koop campaigning to get his old job back?
Senate Finance Committee
March 7, 2002
"The Administration's FY 2003 Budget Proposals for Prescription Drugs"
Excerpts of testimony of Bob Kerrey, representing the Concord Coalition:
You have invited me to testify on the question of adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. My simple advice is don't do it. Not unless you are prepared to make fundamental reforms in the way Americans finance the cost of their health care.
Members of the Finance Committee, I do not think that doing nothing is an option. Americans can afford a prescription drug benefit but I do not believe we can afford to add it to Medicare as it is currently structured. More challenging I do not believe we can solve this problem by focusing on benefit changes or reductions in reimbursements to providers. Instead I believe we need to focus our attention on fundamental reform of the way Americans become eligible under Federal law for health insurance.
Though intuition is often a good guide when making decisions sometimes it fails us. In this case intuition signals that we should narrow the scope of our Federal health care entitlement programs in order to save money. However, I believe the counter-intuitive choice, namely to expand the entitlement, is the least costly choice.
I urge you to consider that for budgetary, economic and moral reasons we cannot get from where we are now to where we want to go by adding a new and expensive benefit to an entitlement program. Nor can we get there by just reforming existing programs. We can only get there by fundamentally altering the way we become eligible for insurance in the first place.
Beginning with a universal entitlement does not mean higher spending or more governmental interference with the choices made by patients or providers. In truth it could mean a lot less of both. It would mean that we would start thinking about ourselves as a single group of 280 million Americans who are all part of the same health system and who all need to face the challenge of matching our appetite for quality with our capacity to pay.
<http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/030702bktest.pdf>http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/030702bktest.pdf
Comment: Raise the flags and fire the flares!
The Concord Coalition has been the leading voice for responsible restraint in the funding of our programs of social insurance, Medicare and Social Security. Former Sen. Kerrey, in representing the Coalition, has clearly stated that a universal health insurance program is probably the most fiscally responsible approach to "matching our appetite for quality with our capacity to pay."
To the towers and ring the bells! All of America must hear this great news!