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Government Already Runs Health Care for Millions of Americans
Some people say they don’t want health care reform because they don’t want the government involved. Or—shiver me timbers and pass the Socialist smelling salts—they don’t want a “government-run health care system.”
Here’s news for them: The private health care system in the United States is so bad that more people already are getting their health care from the government because they can’t get it in the private sector.
This from that most Communist of daily newspapers, the Wall Street Journal:
More people are getting their health insurance from the government as the number of individuals with coverage from an employer declines…
The number of people in the U.S. without health insurance rose by about 700,000 between 2007 and 2008 to 46.3 million. The proportion of uninsured was essentially unchanged at 15.4 percent.
An additional 4.4 million people in the U.S. were insured by the government as of 2008, for a total of 87.4 million, or 29 percent of the population, up from 27.8 percent in 2007. At the same time, 1.1 million fewer people had coverage from an employer in 2008, leaving 176.3 million people with such coverage.
Under the nation’s current health care system, we pay more for worse health care than anyone else in any industrialized nation. Or, as writer Brad Reed succinctly sums it up: Americans pay more to die earlier.
In 2007, the United States spent an average of $7,290 per person on health care—16 percent of gross domestic product [GDP]. By contrast, our Canadian neighbors spent an average of $3,895 per person, or 10 percent of GDP. The British spent $2,992 per person, or 8.4 percent of GDP. And the Japanese, who have some of the longest life expectancies in the world, spend $2,581 per person, or 8 percent of GDP.
Just ask some of the 2,000 people in Harris County, Texas, who on Saturday packed into what is being described as the largest free clinic ever held in the United States. This from the local ABC news outlet in Houston:
Many of the people we talked to can’t afford health insurance, especially in the rough economy. Some say it shows the need for health care reform.
All patients who saw a doctor Saturday will get information about a free clinic near their home where they can go for follow-up care. There are at least eight here in the Houston area, and these days they are busier than ever.
In 2008, the National Association of Free Clinics says its doctors saw 4 million patients. This year, it’s expecting to see twice that number because of the bad economy.
And guess who’s funding those free clinics?
The government. In yet another article from the Wall Street Journal:
The centers are on track to handle more than 20 million patients this year, up by more than 2 million from last year and twice the figure of a decade ago, according to surveys by the National Association of Community Health Centers.
The no-frills centers receive block federal grants for much of their funds and pay medical staff a fixed salary, so they have little incentive to jack up costs with unnecessary care.
So, let’s see.
The private health insurance industry has failed millions of Americans.
A health care reform plan that includes a public option would give us the choice of whether to select the private sector or the public sector.
The concern over health care reform clearly can’t be about government involvement—the government already is massively involved in providing health care.
That means the only ones who really fear government involvement in health care are the special interests of profiteering corporate HMOs and the big health care insurance corporations. What’s at stake for them is their massive profiteering by means of their obstructing any real competition.
It’s clear from recent scientific polls in September 2009 that more than 65 percent of Americans, a huge supermajority, are expressly and strongly in support of Sen. Rockefeller’s plan for quality choice option right that would add genuine competition to the health care system.
What’s at stake for consumers is our health—and lives.
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8 Comments
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Thank you Tula! I hope you email this article to Mr. Trumka, the AFL-CIO Executive Board, etc. along with a reminder that the AFL-CIO convention voted for single-payer “Medicare for All”.
Let all the politicians in Washington (especially the Democrats on the take with “campaign contributions” from the health care lobbyists) that the AFL-CIO is drawing the line. The Democrats better come through for the people on this vital issue of health care, or else no more support to the Democrats.
Threaten these corrupt politicians that a new national political party will be formed by 2010 to represent the economic interests of all working people.
The organized labor movement should demand “equal time” on national media to present the information such as you have presented above. Without this, the incessant babble of Rush Limbaughs, unending anti-labor commercial media, etc. will forever drown out any voice expressing the economic needs of working people, organized and especially unorganized.
I agree with everything you said. Single payer is the only solution to our problem, morally and fiscally, and if government doesn’t deliver, then labor should pull their support.
People are dying in this country for lack of health care and there’s no excuse for that.
If our government can take us to war for 6 years with only a few months of preparation, then they can give us a single payer health care program in the same amount of preparation.
I would like to see labor ally with the single payer movement….
We can’t do it without an alliance.
Sea star RN
Senator Rockefeller (D) Wv. will purpose a public option today.This week we will see who the friends of labor really are we don’t have many.They have taken our money and not delivered again.We sorely need a viable thrid party and the AFL-CIO could do much more to make it happen.But as usual they are more interested in more dues paying members than actual results.These things always revolve around money and the AFL-CIO has not spent ours wisely.
Interesting post but actually the information is not correct. The National Association of Free Clinics and free clinics around the country do not receive federal or state funding. FEDERALLY QUALIFIED HEALTH CENTERS do.
FREE CLINICS are privately supporeted by their communites and donations and grants. FREE CLINICS use volunteers to provide medical care. For every dollar donated to a free clinic $5 dollars are services are given.
FEDERALLY QUALIFIED HEALTH CENTERS are not free clinics. They have paid staff and they are funded by the government.
What happened in Texas on Saturday was done by volunteers and not funded by the government.
Government includes state and local funding. Free clinics receive public funding–taxpayer money–from the cities in which they are located.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32011901/ns/health-health_care/
Ok, so a public option is on the edge of the table. But we have no idea how watered down it will be. Single payer eliminates the greedy profit seeking mongrols of the health insurance industry, how much better for true reform can that get!??
The AFL-CIO needs to step up and remind ALL the candidates & the president that we worked on getting them elected, that single payer is the solution to the crisis. Nothing less.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
Health Care Reform
The biggest obstacle to having universal health care is the decades long and continued abuse by the medical industrial complex (very much including the pharmaceutical industry), and “health care” providers, both professional and institutional.
The only way to achieve health reform in the USA and worldwide is to a implement a single payer (combining private (evolving into quasi-public) and public payers into one payment system) with locally and regionally administered HMOs with Providers forming a non-profit Union contracting to scale back costs on the order of at least 35 to 40%.
A Medical Policy Board needs to be established with non-economically interested Doctors, who also understand the issues of abuse and fraud and over-competition (e.g. Nortin Hadler, Shannon Brownlee) and resources budgeted to communities under the aegis of community/regional plans, which strongly emphasizes an environmental/public health/wellness plan appropriate care and cost containment.
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
wiserunion@earthlink.net
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808
Health Care Reform
The Role of the Provider Community
In my mind, based on personal and familiar experience, the jury is still out on the motivation of physicians. I’ve seen the work of some good ones, but I’ve seen the disasters caused by probably more of them who were driven by the need to maximize revenues through all aspects of the “medical-industrial complex” (a term that I coined many years ago).
It is probably quite true that over-treatment also comes from the need to practice “defensive medicine”. But I also believe that such is a probably distant secondary cause.
I am skeptical about the feasibility, cost, and benefits of computerizing medical records. If it were feasible, even possible, it would only reinforce the over-diagnoses that are so fundamental to the problems that we face today. It is a very sad state of affairs that we are and should be losing confidence in the medical establishment. I am very thankful for the superb work that doctors did when I badly broke my leg when I was 14 years old. I was also very glad that they had morphine. There are other instances, like penicillin, curing polio, and others that I’m sure that ethical scientists and practitioners of medicine could conserve, but for example they did a superb job on my leg before there was any such thing as an MRI and before almost every hospital in the country HAD to have one.
Most hospitals are not-for-profit, but there has been the insidious entry of for-profit corporations onto the scene in the last thirty to fifty years. Certainly, there is no room for profit in any aspect of health care. Also, the need of non-profits to compete with regards to the latest technologies and the updating of physical amenities has been a huge driver in the escalation of health care costs. There are far too many hospitals and they are far too redundantly equipped with a lot of what are unnecessary technologies. Only by pooling the equity and assets of hospitals, clinics, etc. can we correct this situation and ratchet down the costs of health care. This is the beauty of an equity union and the private sector participation is necessary from not only a payers’ perspective (i.e. “double payer” system), but especially with respect to reining in the costs associated with over-utilization, from provider and medical industrial complex abuse (Capitalist profiteering) and the very unwise extant system of funding medical and related scientific education.
I paid dues to the Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) for a couple of years. They make some excellent points about the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the current health insurance industry. I agree that great savings could accrue from reforming said businesses (again, a combination of for-profits and non-profits). However, PNHP has yet to acknowledge and speak to the abuses on the Provider side of the equation, except to criticize the pharmaceutical industry.
If we had a Healthcare Provider Community (ideally worldwide) Union, we would be all that much closer to realizing true health care reform (a more perfect union, if you will). However, the provider community MUST come to grips with over-treatment, over-utilization, and the resulting costs that are contributing to our collective and individual bankruptcies, and reduced quality of lives that result from such.
The provider community and their associated administrators need to start thinking about how they can transition to a more workable health care system. That’s the beauty of an Equity Union and my Plan where Equity can be put into trust and assets and employees methodically transitioned into to useful alternative roles.
Let’s see more talk and writings from the Provider Community concerning their role in the continuing tragedy and impending disaster of the health care system in the USA.
Then there are all the issues of environmental, and thus public health, a subject of another, VERY LARGE, discussion.
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
wiserunion@earthlink.net
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808