I am a 78-year-old retired orthopedic surgeon who was a registered Republican all my life until 2002, when I discovered that the current Republican Party no longer represented my value system.
I am now convinced that a national health insurance plan is required and overdue. After due consideration, it is my opinion that a single-payer plan is the most reasonable option to finance this legislation. The health-care system in the United States has largely priced itself out of business.
When the presidents of the three largest private health insurance companies in the country — UnitedHealth’s Golden Rule Insurance Co., Assurant Health and WellPoint Inc. (parent of Blue Cross of California) — told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (June 6, 2009) that they would not discontinue their practice of rescission of ill patients, I thought they had driven the final nail in the coffin of private health insurance companies.
However, it seems not to have even caused a ripple of discontent within Congress. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the majority of health-care providers, the single-payer plan makes the most sense. It is favored by approximately 72 percent of American citizens, according to a recent poll. It would definitely be the most economical approach as it would not be required to pay dividends nor the obscene pay packages for executive officers. The administrative costs would be much less than those of our multiple carriers as they would not have hired so many claims adjusters to attempt to find some reason to weasel out of paying a claim or canceling policies on gravely ill patients.
We owe nothing to insurance companies
It would eliminate most, if not all, health insurance companies. So what? We owe the insurance companies of this nation nothing.
They would never write flood insurance policies, so the federal government had to provide it. They stopped writing earthquake insurance, so the state governments had to provide it. They stopped writing professional liability insurance for physicians, so the physicians had to form cooperatives to provide it for themselves.
So why not have the federal government provide health insurance to all of its citizens? It is not socialized medicine; it is health insurance offered by the United States of America. Medicare has worked out pretty well. I believe all taxpayers should pay a premium with their income taxes on a progressive sliding scale like our income taxes, with those most able to pay contributing the most. Also, employers should pay something for each and every employee, as the medical costs of workers’ compensation insurance would have been eliminated. Everyone who is able would pay something, but it would certainly be a lot less expensive than today’s private insurance.
I personally see the single-payer route a win-win situation. If Congress passes a bill that does not at least carry the option of a public, government-run health insurance plan, I hope President Obama will veto it. I am extremely angry that our real enemy for change is within our own party. I can’t believe that Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, at the beginning of his committee’s hearing on health care, indicated that “single payer was off the table.”
Democrats should use their power
Forget bipartisanism. Bipartisanism was slain by the Republicans on Inauguration Day. We have the numbers; let’s go for the jugular! If legislation providing national health insurance as well as legislation regulating fossil fuel use and a crash program of developing and installation of green energy with the consequent lessening of our dependence on foreign oil is not enacted, I can guarantee you that the Democratic Party will lose seats in Congress regardless of how much money is thrown around in the election of 2010.
Democrats, please close ranks before it is too late
Dear Mr. President this letter was from a Doctor in my home state. Mr President we need Single Payer, I need single payer, my children and grandchildren need single payer. We gave you a resounding win a democratic House and Senate, and somehow you people cannot walk in lockstep a lousy six months to get the most important legislation of our lifetimes done. We are trying to organize a million plus person march on Washington the day congress and the senate get back to Washington. Our rallying cry will be “Everybody In, Nobody Out”. We will explain to the people that single payer is not a socialist system

How are we gonna get there if the president doesn’t want it and congress doesn’t have the stomach. I’m calling and writing my representatives regularly to get heard about this bs of a bill they are trying to pass. So far it is falling on deaf ears.

If you have any ideas on how to get through, I’d love to hear them. Honestly.

As to your earlier question about single payer, I’m for it as long as that really means Congress is on the exact same system and trusts it for themselves as much as for us. No exceptions. Then I’ll know we have a system that works. True single payer. Even that will have its problems, however.

I’ll say it yet again. I’m for single-payer, universal health INSURANCE. I’m against the the public-option duct-taped to the current for-profit-health-insurance-system bill that Obama favors.

Get that?

The fact is, two-thirds of Americans support a single-payer system. That’s not a landslide in U.S. politics; it’s an Earth-shaking number!

Single-payer works well in other countries around the world. They have better health-care outcomes (we rank 37th) and spend less per capita (we rank 1st). And, the public knows it.

This frightens the health-insurance oligarchs whose billions in annual profits would disappear if Congress passes single-payer in spite of their man, Obama, saying it is “off the table.”

Thus, the industry has sent in their PR hounds, in the form of Americans For Prosperity, Patients United Now and Patients First (all industry-funded “AstroTurf” groups) to fear-monger, dis-inform, and bus their operatives from state to state to disrupt public meetings where constituents were likely to press their congress-persons to vote for single-payer.

It’s the same strategy that successfully shut down the recount in Florida in 2000, and in fact, some of the fake protesters in that famous photograph (see my above posts) now work for Koch Industries, which is funding the recess-rally actions.

The single-payer bill is H.R. 676. The bill has 93 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The text is here: http://johnconyers.com/hr676text

Estimates are that single-payer would cut family health-care costs by as much as 80%, create 3 million new health-care jobs, and give consumers more access to better health care. The current denial-care system would be over, and 55,000 health-insurance company jobs would go away, along with the aforementioned billions in annual profits.

To Hell with Obama. Tell CONGRESS to pass single-payer!!!

Yea, that’s what we said last year too.

You mean like Obama & Co. during the primaries? We all lived it, so don’t even try to pull that b.s. here. Funny, you didn’t have a problem with caucus fraud and ACORN tactics back then, did ya? Axelrod took astroturfing and propaganda to a level that made Rove envious. You are either blind or complicit.

Oh, you poor, sweet, deluded bot. Whatever gave you the idea that Obama was going to do single payer? Really, honey, you need to pay more attention before you vote.