The New York Times
February 7, 2004
Frist Expects Congress to Try to Expand Health Coverage
By Robert Pear
The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said on Friday that “it is impossible” to have all Americans covered by health insurance, but he predicted that Congress would take incremental steps to expand coverage this year.
“It is impossible to get everybody covered,” Dr. Frist said at a meeting with journalists. “It’s impossible to get to 100 percent.”
Comment: Dr. Frist understands the single-payer model. But it is difficult to understand how a physician with traditional ethical values could have such a blatant disregard for the truth. But then an individual who could care less about those who would suffer under his inadequate proposals probably wouldn’t agonize over telling a little fib. After all, what is that fib compared to the tens of thousands of young adults that will die because of lack of coverage under his proposals?
How can a physician who dedicates his life to preserving the health and life of each individual patient under his care be so callous when it comes to policy decisions that will negatively impact the health of millions of would-be, should-be, but can’t-afford-to-be patients?
Subject: Business needs to co-opt concept of universal health care San Francisco Chronicle
February 8, 2004
Health care, the flashpoint
By David Lazarus
The dismal state of the U.S. health care system will be an uninvited guest at the table when representatives of SBC workers and management sit down this week to attempt to avert a crippling strike.
The talks, to be held at a Pleasanton hotel, will focus to a large extent on whether telecom giant SBC will be able to stick employees with a portion of the company’s almost $2 billion in annual health care costs, according to sources familiar with the matter.
SBC’s regional contracts with nearly 100,000 employees nationwide expire in
April. Officials at the employees’ union, the Communications Workers of America, say a strike is virtually certain if SBC tampers with existing medical benefits. Union locals are already signing up workers for possible strike assignments.
For its part, SBC told company managers in a recent internal memo that they
must be prepared to take over key operations in the event of a strike. Managers’ vacations scheduled for April and beyond have been canceled.
All this rancor could be avoided if the United States abandoned its broken system of corporate welfare and switched instead to a Canadian-style system of publicly funded universal health care.
And that’s essentially what labor leaders representing about 30,000 California and Nevada workers plan to tell SBC when the two sides meet in Pleasanton on Thursday.
“Universal health care is the ultimate solution,” said Bill Harvey, a union negotiator. “SBC and other major corporations should be fighting side by side with us to tackle health care problems.”
Corporate America is gradually waking up to the fact that runaway health care costs are having a devastating impact on companies, workers and customers.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/08/BUGMD4QTRH1.DTL&type=printable
Comment: Support for the cause of universal health care is no longer limited to advocates of health care justice. It has now become an economic necessity for the business community and an idea that they need to co-opt. A publicly-funded universal health care system would meet the progressive goal of universal access to comprehensive health care, and it would meet the conservative goal of making health care affordable. We really don’t have any other option.