Evaluating Health Care

There is a Washington DC based non- partisan think tank “Commonwealth Fund” that has a report out evaluating the Health Care systems of seven major industrialized countries. The study ranks the United States "dead last" in the quality, efficiency, and equity of its health care system, and that Americans pay roughly twice as much for health care as residents of other nations, and get poorer outcomes.

What this study highlights is that Americans have been totally misused - for the decades since the Great Reagan Deregulation - by for-profit health insurance companies. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been diverted from our health care system over the years by for-profit health insurance companies, putting that money into the pockets of wealthy stockholders and top executives and corporate jets, instead of paying for health care for their customers. Other countries that forbid by law, for-profit companies from offering basic healthcare insurance have better outcomes and lower costs.
We need a single-payer health-care system in this country, and it could be done easily and with only 50 votes in the Senate if we just fulfilled LBJ's original vision for Medicare by doing away with the age limit on it and making it available to all people and all employers.

Health care today, costs an average of $12,000 per year for each family. If Medicare for everyone was instituted, the average cost of health care would be $6,000 per year.
If the Republicans win control of Congress in November, they have stated that they would raise the age for getting Social Security benefits to 70. Our Senator Murkowski has voted against the Health Care reform bill and has stated that she will vote to have it scrapped. Is she planning on opting out of her Federal health care? She has said she will also vote to destroy (privatize) Social Security.

A little unpublicized fact is that Social Security has nothing to do with the Federal deficit. It is a self –sustaining program. What Congress should do is raise the payroll tax cap for the wealthiest Americans in order to strengthen the Social Security financial structure.

Fifteen million working men and women are unemployed; it would be 26 million if the underemployed were counted. Yet Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked efforts to create jobs and rebuild our economy. They have denied Unemployment benefits repeatedly and yet as I recall, unemployment is one of the payroll taxes that are taken out of one’s paycheck.

What this country really needs is another FDR to start programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to start working on the infrastructure of our country. We need bridges fixed so they don’t fall down; we need railroads built to cross this country so we would use less gas; we need to invest in wind, water and solar power; we need to start manufacturing products again and we need to stop letting foreign countries bring their products into this country without paying taxes on them. We need to penalize American companies that take their manufacturing overseas.

Please let your members of Congress and the President know that is what they should be doing.