America's Mandate For Health Care Reform

Summer of 2009

Dear United States Elected Officials,

We the undersigned believe health insurance is every American citizens right. Twenty-eight industrialized nations have a single payer or public health care options that are government regulated. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee access to health care as a right. Therefore, the United States ranks near the bottom among industrialized countries in indicators from life expectancy (20th) to infant mortality (23rd). But no other nation spends as much per capita on health care as the United States. This is a strong cause for outrage for the American public. A top priority of Americans including the American Medical Association (A.M.A.) is access to high-quality health care for all. Therefore, a federally funded health care system for all American citizens must become a top national security concern; to not only ensure our competitiveness in the world, but for our health, and our pursuit of happiness. We need an insurance program for all Americans, like the ones enjoyed by the legislators in Washington, that we the people pay for with our tax dollars.

The government provides enormous sums of funds for national security to our intelligence agencies and military to save lives and prevent incurring burdensome economic costs. For instance, the tragic events of 9/11 resulted in over 4,000 lost lives and economic losses of more than $32.5 billion. Accordingly, it's true that intelligence and military force is legitimately one of the top legislative security concerns. However, we have over 50 million citizens with no health coverage, and at least 18,000 of them die unnecessarily each year as a result (that's nearly five 9/11's annually). According to The American Journal of Psychiatry, (June 2008), serious mental illness alone was associated with an estimated annual loss of GDP earnings that was between $193.2 billion and $317 billion in the United States. Compare this loss to our annual federal spending for health care of $100 billion and it's clear that illnesses due to insufficient federal funding for health care has effectively dwarfed all harm caused by foreign threats.

The Medicare and Medicaid programs are positive programs for citizens and smart steps forward. However, both programs are quite limited in scope. Medicare is a health insurance program only for people age 65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease. Medicaid serves some eligible low-income parents, children, seniors, and people with certain disabilities. But being poor, or even very poor, does not necessarily qualify an individual for Medicaid. This program does not cover approximately sixty percent of Americans in poverty.

The hospital emergency room is a poor excuse for not having a nationalized health care system. First, it is not preventative. Secondly, it is an extreme economic burden for hospitals. According to the National Coalition on Health Care, hospitals provide about $34 billion worth of uncompensated care annually. Hospitals offset these costs by keeping staff to a minimum, causing employee burnout and long waits, which lowers service levels and raises charges for privately, insured patients. In 1998, Americans spent $1.1 trillion on health care, roughly $4,000 for every person in the United States. In only ten years the cost has doubled. Total spending was $2.4 TRILLION in 2007, or $7900 per person, (i.e.16 percent of the nation's gross domestic product). This is widely seen as a serious problem for the economy. By several measures, health care spending is forcing businesses and families to cut back on operations and household expenses. In 2008, total national health expenditures were expected to raise 6.9 percent -- two times the rate of inflation. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, without any changes in federal law, it will rise to 25 percent of the G.D.P. in 2025. With private health insurers making billions of dollars in profits, a recent Harvard University study found that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. The study found that many declaring bankruptcy were part of the middle class and were employed before they became ill, but had lost their health insurance by the time they declared bankruptcy.

We must create a government single payer or robust government public health care option with NO strings attached to private business. Only then, will we force the private sector to provide competitive options. In addition, we must take insurance companies out of the role of medical gatekeeper and giveback to doctors the ability to practice medicine without being dictated to by an insurance company.

It's the insurance and drug companies that are fighting against a single payer or government health care option. Ironically, they're most responsible for the breakdown of medical care in this country. The private sector free market does not work for health care. The free market works where efforts to increase profits cause companies to provide better products and more service. It does not work were companies make a higher profit by denying service, and that is how insurance companies make a profit. Health care must not be a commercial commodity subject to a profit/risk business model and rationed out accordingly. Our private health care industry has the wrong incentives--do less for the patient and make money. Therefore, health care reform must not be debated on their terms.

A practical solution to our obsolete system is to federalize a single health care payer or alternatively, create a robust government public health care option. Insurance companies should be available to those who prefer to purchase private health insurance, without infringing on the citizens rights to access of a national health option as needed. Evidence based medical care standards can insure US citizens are provided with statistically sound treatment standards and yet maximize the societal benefit from the care rendered, apart from the avaricious excesses of insurers, pharmaceutical companies, clinic owners, and the legal profession. Health care insurance should not be left to the private sector.

A single payer or robust public option promotes small business with less need for high start-up costs. It's time to decouple health insurance from employment status. The current system gives employers the right to inquire into the most personal areas of their employees' lives, ostensibly for the purpose of insurance coverage. The current system also imposes great hardship on those who are self-employed or work for companies that don't provide health insurance. Access to quality health care must be divorced from employment. The people need the security of knowing they have health care available for their children and themselves. Americans without "employers" have as much right to health care as have "employees" (but most simply cannot afford it under our current system without employer-subsidized insurance). Further, employers have no innate responsibility to ensure life's basics for their workers, but governments DO have this responsibility toward their citizens, and communities DO have this responsibility toward their members. NO American should have to go without treatment for disease or injury, be turned away at an emergency room, or stay in an inappropriate job situation, simply because health care in this country is available only -arbitrarily - through an employer-sponsored insurance program. Let us be our brothers' keepers, and be kept by our brethren, in life's essentials: food, shelter, education, and basic medical care.

You can promote "Single Payer Health Care" by co-sponsoring the single payer universal health care bill proposed in H.R. 676, the "Medicare For All" Bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers. Under H.R. 676, a family of four making the median income of $56,200 would pay about $2,700 in payroll tax for all health care costs. No deductibles, no co-pays, no worrying about catastrophic coverage. The services covered include primary care, inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, hearing, dental and vision care, chiropractic treatment, mental health services, and long-term care. Physicians for a National Health Program estimates the nation could save over $286 billion dollars a year in total health care costs. That's enough to cover all the uninsured and provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States. No other issue so directly impacts Americans. Please sign on as a co-sponsor to this vital issue.

All in all, the US federal government has an obligation to create systems that help its citizens live secure and prosperous lives. We have outlined how it is the duty of government to provide its citizens with health care and also have proposed a solution for us to embark on that will save lives and help the economy. President Obama has laid out his principles and those principles should be followed to pass a robust health care reform bill (public and/or private) that provides health care for all American people. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter and we hope we can count on you to support this public mandate which is urgently needed for Americans to give their best by bringing back America's best health care system for body, mind and spirit.