By GEOFF THOMAS
Daily Record (Morris County, N.J.)
January 24, 2010
I am a health care reform activist, yet I cannot support the current health care finance reform bills moving through Congress. The current bills provide no real long-term savings, continue to enrich the bloated and inefficient for-profit private health insurance industry, and fail to address the crippling economic burden that every American worker must carry versus all competitors abroad.
To those on the right who say we cannot have a national health plan, I ask: Why must American companies continue to support the bloated and inefficient private health insurance industry, while upstart competitors can shed these costs by stiffing workers with a cheap plan, and international competitors are covered by efficient, nonprofit national plans?
Unethical bosses have the edge today, and under these bills, responsible bosses get shafted.
The Republicans always claim to be in favor of states’ rights. So why aren’t they supporting enabling states to set up their own single-payer systems? Conservatives claim to be in favor of competition, so why do they oppose competitive bidding for national bulk purchases of pharmaceuticals? Why are these principles never applicable when they would benefit ordinary people?
To those on the left who insist that any bill is better than no bill, I say, “Wake up and smell the coffee.” With the new bill, the United States will continue to remain inefficient and uncompetitive ā losing jobs overseas while not bringing corrective needed reforms to our health care system. We need a simple, efficient and humane system that is carefully audited to detect and eliminate fraud and waste. The public option will not achieve that goal. It’s not really even a step on a path toward that goal.
We need a national nonprofit system of providing access to health care, as every other industrialized nation already has. We need to eliminate the role of private, for-profit insurers in providing access to necessary medical care in the United States.
We need a system that provides care for the sick at no cost out of pocket. All of the other developed nations have achieved something at least very close to that goal.
Yet early on, the Democratic majority refused to discuss national single-payer solutions to our health care morass. Why? Because senators in thinly populated states were fed a mind-boggling amount of cash by health industry backers to scuttle real reform.
I urge our public officials to educate themselves on the savings that HR 676, a national expanded Medicare system, would bring to New Jersey’s budget woes on all levels.
New Jersey could save $2.6 billion yearly under this bill, while erasing the unfunded and not often discussed current $58 billion health care liability already facing the state. This is a budget-busting, tax-bloating liability that will wreck New Jersey’s economy for years to come if not removed by HR 676.
Read more on health care finance reform at www.healthcare-now, and at www.PNHP.org.
Geoff Thomas is a resident of Madison.
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20100124/OPINION03/100123023/1096/OPINION/We+need+to+provide+Medicare+to+all