WHAT WE MUST DO TO SOLVE THIS
CRISIS
In early May at the main branch of the Philadelphia
Free Library I attended a forum on our healthcare crisis. The panelists
advocated two different responses. Most spoke in favor of
Rendell's Pennsylvania ABC while only Walter Tsou, former Commissioner of
Health for Philadelphia, spoke on behalf of HR 676 and HB 1660/SB 300,
single payer bills in Congress and in the Pennsylvania state legislature.
Yet all indicated a preference for a single payer system as a solution.
(Single payer means that health care is financed through a single source,
i.e., the government, from funding collected through progressive taxation of
citizens and businesses.)
If we think of adopting single payer as building a new
dike against the flood of healthcare problems that face us (an approach
favored by 59% of doctors now, according to a recent University of Indiana
survey), every panelist but Dr. Tsou seemed to feel that all we can do, at
best, is patch a few holes in the old dike we have. Yet the panelists that
supported the remains of the Rendell Plan acknowledged that, given the scope
of the problem, these would indeed be patches (i.e., band-aids).
Pennsylvania ABC, the bill they were for, would
provide insurance for only 270,000 Pennsylvanians, and, though nobody said
so, at least 4,000 people in our state are losing insurance each month (this
number will rise if economic conditions cause more job losses). Despite its
severe inadequacy, these panelists were for ABC --even though its passage is
doubtful--and I agree that its passage would be a good thing. But they
seemed feel that we can't get a single payer system in this country for
years, if ever.
Tsou referred to the insurance industry as the
"elephant in the room." I want to know why so many people concerned about
our healthcare woes won't take on the elephant! While it is difficult to
oppose a huge, wealthy corporate entity, there are those who are doing
it. The California Nurses Association, a large and growing union, is
working for Medicare For All by pushing vociferously for the passage of HR
676, stalled in Congress since 2005, and working for a state single payer
plan.
The New York Nurses Association is trying to get
single payer on the state and on the national level too. And both are
calling for a national day of protest against health insurance corporations
on June 19th. This protest is being sponsored here by the Pennsylvania
Association or Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), a union, with
cooperation from many other organizations. If the nurses have the courage,
the rest of us must find it.
The nurses know that the only national systems that
work have something in common. Eighty-seven of the advanced countries in
the world provide universal healthcare in a variety of ways. Not all use a
single tax-supported fund. Instead, what unites all these plans is that
they are free of profit-making. Usually healthcare is publicly-funded but
privately-delivered, so there is nothing "bureaucratic" about the care that
the Germans, Japanese, Italians, French, Taiwanese, and so many other
peoples receive.
The savings come from not having profits, from not
paying CEO'S million-dollar salaries, and from eliminating the
administrative waste of using insurance corporations as middle men.
Those expenses, which come from the dependency on the insurance industry,
are what would ail the plans offered by Clinton and Obama, and they are what
is keeping the Massachusetts “universal” mandated health insurance system
from being workable.
Moreover, horror stories, the hideous progeny
of the obsession with profits in the world of corporate insurance,
are commonplace. A woman I met donated her liver to her sister--and was
dropped by her insurance company. Corporate insurance told a patient she
didn't need an MRI that her doctor had ordered; by the time she got one, her
thymoma, a rare form of cancer, was incurable. If we allow ourselves to be
bought off with bills that depend on insurance companies, we will never get
the kind of system that is not too costly to be truly universal and that is
humane.
A benefit paid to save someone from suffering or even death must
not be thought of as a financial loss. In our state there are gutsy people
that understand this and are working for the passage of the Family and
Business Healthcare Security Act (HB 1660 and SB 300), a state single payer
bill. Each of you reading this can help by calling your state
representatives to urge them to support HB 1660 and your national reps to
support HR 676.
And another way to contribute to the struggle exists:
come to the protest against the health insurance industry outside Cigna at 5
Penn Center at noon on June 19th. Let’s grapple with that elephant even if
he is huge and powerful!
Linda Hunt
Beckman
beckman5@verizon.net
