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Task Force Coordinators:
Larry Kalb, Co-Chair (Bellingham, WA)
Marilyn Clement, Co-Chair (New York, NY)
Single Payer Health Care Working Group
Issue Working Groups - Main Directory
We want a good health care system controlled by us, the patients, not the current multiple-payer chaos.
In fact, we specifically do not want the stockmarket and the insurance companies, HMO's and pharmaceutical companies in control of our health care. They have already harvested too much money. They reap windfall profits while we pay for all health care through premiums, taxes, co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket costs. And make no mistake, we all pay for this.
Our economy is under terrible strain, deeply in debt--with a business community now at a 15% disadvantage in the world market because of our exorbitant health care costs.
Now these companies, together with lobbyists and compliant legislators, are trying every possible legislative scheme to be sure they continue to be in the driver's seat of American medicine. They extract 15% from the overall economy now. Do they hope for 25%?
As a result, our economy suffers. More people are unable to purchase computers, buy shoes, go to the movies, pay for college, or even buy sufficient groceries and fuel because the health care bite is an increasing portion of their income.
Some of the dozens of plans being proposed by the lobbyists and their legislators: state or federal mandates requiring that every individual and every business must purchase "insurance;" high-deductible health savings accounts; minimal benefit, so-called "consumer-driven" plans; tax credits; tax increases for fewer benefits from the over-burdened budgets of the states; federal and state contributions to cover more children--or more people nearing retirement; more contributions for prescription drugs (using our Medicare money to pay for increased corporate profits); more tax money to try out health savings accounts and pay brokers to handle them; and government-supported risk pools for small businesses, as well as more money from co-pays, deductibles, and taxes to support all of this.
None of these schemes will work.
All of them are being promoted in order to keep HMO, drug and insurance company profits growing.
We taxpayers can't afford this irresponsibility any more. We must move to a non-profit national single-payer system such as an enhanced Medicare for all that will save money, save our economy, pay doctors a decent income, and help the ordinary taxpayer get health care.
We need one system with a combined risk pool that serves all of us--more health care for less money.
The infrastructure needs to be organized into a system of regional entities made up of patients, doctors, hospitals, nurses, advocates and other stake-holders using our money wisely and providing comprehensive care for all. But to make this work, the payment mechanism must by-pass insurance companies. They provide no health care and we don't really need them.
We, the taxpayers, want to be in the driver's seat of a real "patient-driven" health care system that belongs to all of us.
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