Rose Ann DeMoro
Palm Beach Post
Letters to the Editor
Monday, October 27, 2008
If we can take ownership of our banks, why not a similar approach for our imploding health-care system? In homes across America, our health-care system is dying a quiet death. The millions who endure their pain away from the spotlight of Wall Street deserve sweeping systemic solutions as well.
Leslie Elder of West Palm Beach was hit with $70,000 in bills for surgeries for kidney cancer. Susan Christensen of Altamonte Springs had to fight with her insurer to cover her choice of where to give birth to her child, as required by Florida law.
Last week, the Census Bureau found that up to 30 percent of South Floridians under 65 are uninsured. The news isn’t so great for those with insurance, either. Another report in The Wall Street Journal noted that employers are expected to increase out-of-pocket costs to workers by more than 10 percent next year. Perhaps most shocking is the story in USA Today that one of every eight patients with advanced cancer turned down recommended care because of the cost.
If we can bail out our financial system, why can’t we do the same for the tens of millions of Americans facing bankruptcy and health-care calamity? Through the simple, cost-effective approach of improving and expanding Medicare to cover everyone, the U.S. could nationalize the financing of health-care delivery, a single-payer system, while leaving intact the most private system of hospitals and doctors.
What moved the Bush administration to take the partial nationalization approach was the example of Great Britain that has broad support among other industrialized nations. Residents in nearly all those other countries at least have less worries about their health security. Sadly, we rank last among 19 comparable industrial nations in preventable deaths, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund. The main difference is that those nations have a nationalized or single-payer health-care system, such as U.S. Medicare.
Health care is now the second top issue of concern in the national election, trailing only the economic disaster. As Barack Obama said in the second debate, health care “should be a right for every American.” If we can rescue the banks, surely we can rescue the rest of America, starting with our health.
Editor’s note: Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, www.guaranteedhealthcare.org
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2008/10/27/mondaywebletters_1027.html