Why Healthcare Can't Wait
Through the years, there have been many issues where labor and business don't see eye to eye. Here's one where we firmly agree: the need to fix healthcare, now, not in spite of the economic crisis, but because of it. For this reason, we are proud to stand together with President Obama as he reinforces the urgency of health care reform in the State of the Union speech before Congress.
America's economic recovery depends upon solving the healthcare emergency that is bankrupting families and eroding our competitiveness in the global economy. Bringing healthcare security to every American will help jump-start the nation's recovery and provide a foundation for new economic opportunity, innovation and job growth.
The evaporation of nearly 600,000 jobs in January alone makes the need for healthcare reform more urgent than ever. Each one percent rise in the national unemployment rate strands a million more people without health insurance. Even for many of the employed, healthcare costs are outpacing income and forcing hard choices, such as taking care of a family's health or keeping a roof over its head.
President Obama is firm in his resolve to create a fair and sustainable healthcare system and millions of Americans stand behind his vision. Congress must take swift action to enact comprehensive healthcare reform today.
Taking the right steps to reform and rebuild our healthcare system--now--will put us on the road to a healthier, economically robust America. There are rapid gains to be made. America loses an estimated $207 billion every year due to the poorer health and shorter lifespans of those lacking good coverage. Another $1.3 trillion is lost through easily preventable and treatable chronic conditions, such as hypertension, asthma and heart disease. Right now, we spend only four cents of every healthcare dollar on prevention and public health, opening the gates for the most expensive chronic diseases, and paying heavily for the inevitable results.
Solving our healthcare crisis will do more than help rebuild this economy. It will set the stage for the next. Our teaching hospitals and medical centers educate and train the world's most advanced healthcare workforce, accounting for one out of every ten jobs in the United States. A comprehensive approach to healthcare reform will remedy workforce shortages, spur innovation, and add new job opportunities in areas such as prevention, wellness and home-based care. Helping Americans stay healthy will pay off now and for generations to come. For example, reducing deaths from cancer or heart disease by just one percent--readily attainable through universal coverage--would be invaluable on a human level and worth nearly $500 billion to current and future Americans.
With so much at stake, we must begin the work today to create a new healthcare system that:
- Provides affordable, comprehensive coverage for every man, woman, and child in America
- Builds on the strong foundation of employer-based coverage
- Encourages continued innovation in prevention, wellness, and disease treatment, and
- Lowers overall costs, and increases the value of each healthcare dollar spent.
At this critical moment for our nation--with jobs eroding month by month--we can no longer afford a system that costs way too much, excludes too many people, and fails to meet the most essential need of American families--staying healthy.
A new healthcare system is within our reach. With the future of our economy and the future of the American dream at risk, there's no more time to lose. We can change healthcare from what it is now--a quagmire of expense and frustration--to what we know it can become--a source of greater health, innovation and opportunity.
Andy Stern is President of the Service Employees International Union, North America's largest and fastest-growing union.
Jeff Kindler is Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, the nation's largest research-based biopharmaceutical company.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Why do people believe that universal health care will be this great thing where health care will not be limited or rationed?
Instead of an insurance company doing it, it will be Government telling you. Make no mistake, they'll assign a dollar value to your life just like any company.
Pretty simple, offer things for free and people will consume more . . . look what happens when they give away a free taco or free pizza . . . lines out the door.
Just look into the reality of other nation's health care systems instead of offering more scare tactics. The French have the number one health care system in the world. You don't get that rating by not taking care of people. And, by the way, the French love tobacco.
OHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
You said the French, now he'll run screaming from the room!
Funny how it's always the same arguement, with no thought to the idea that we can take the best of healthcare models, like the French healthcare system, not the worst healthcare systems.
"Why do people believe that universal health care will be this great thing where health care will not be limited or rationed?"
Because sane, non-GOP Americans realize that UHC systems work BETTER than what we have now, and that GOP-shills for the current dysfunctional system will say ANYTHING they can to discourage us from discarding their BS, greedy nonsense that currently passes for healthcare.
You don't have any valid points to make, just the same old dishonest lobbyist-driven nonsense.
I live in a European country with universal healthe care, no one tells me or my doctors what to do. Viking is assuming that everyone is as lacking in scruples as the people that run the U.S. system.
What a negative vision of people and of the world in general.
Lets not follow Canadian or English healthcare systems. We'll die of old age waiting for routine tests. On the other hand why can't we have the same health care system as, say Congress? Powers that be don't seem to mention that, do they?
Both the Canadians and the English have much longer lives than Americans.
Do you know this to be fact, or are you just repeating what the drug and insurance industries have used to scare people away from universal health care.
My brother has been taking fishing trips to Canada for 30 years, and he always makes a point of asking Canadians how they like their health care system. In every case over the years, Canadians have told him how great it is to not worry about being treated or having to endure a health care enduced financial crisis.
The insurance and drug companies have duped us into fighting against the one thing that could bring financial and health security to every American, just so they can make a killing.
It's time to join the rest of the civilized world and nationalize health care.
Conservatives will never listen to reason. They'll just have to be outvoted by the rest of us, pure and simple.
It is simply stunning how even relatively low-income conservatives consistently and mindlessly buy the bull their party officials and radio talkshow blowhards feed them (all of whom are mindblowingly rich, doncha know), to their own detriment and against their own interests.
Ah, the canard about "waiting times".
OK, suppose the Canadians doubled their per capita spending on healthcare: what would happen to those famous waiting times? Well, they would be gone, wouldn't they?
So that's what we currently spend, and would coninue to do so under Medicre for All.
Ergo, no lines.
I would rather wait a month than a lifetime.
Waiting times.....
Universal healthcare should come before spending billions of tax payers dollars on EMR software. It is immoral to improve the system before everyone has coverage. The benefits of EMRs is vastly overrated. Paper charts are irrelevant if you cannot afford to see a doctor.
Exactly. The savings are way over exagerated. IBM loves the money of course.
Paying off politicians always gives the best ROI for any large business compared to anything else they can do in a market.
I agree Luvial and trosky. The Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) canard is another gift to the medico-mafia complex.
Critical is putting it mildly. I'm working 3 p/t jobs, paying for my own health insurance and it's killing me. The stress is affecting my health, and I'm living in the most powerful country in the world?! I'm speechless.
This country allows you the opportunity to succeed and to fail . . . it's really up to you if you decided to persue marketable skills that businesses want.
There is a difference between "succeeding and failing" and LIVING AND DYING. Don't you get it?
Maybe YOU'RE independently wealthy. Maybe YOU don't have to worry about ever being laid off from your job as the entire country's economy goes down the tubes. Maybe YOU won't have to worry about keeping a roof over your head and feeding your family instead of paying a thousand dollars a month for cobra coverage. Maybe YOU won't have to suffer not being able to find another job for so long that even if you DID have cobra, it expires. Maybe YOU won't then suddenly find out you have, oh, say, skin cancer (of course using YOUR tough-noogies attitude, well it's YOUR own fault for spending too much time in the sun when you were a kid so you just deserve to die). And maybe YOU then won't be in the situation in which YOU NOW HAVE A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION and in our WONDERFUL, according to you, health care system, CAN'T EVER GET HEALTH INSURANCE AGAIN FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE and have to just go lie down somewhere and let the cancer kill you even though the treatment might have 90% odds of curing you and if you DID live in ANY OTHER WESTERN DEMOCRACY you WOULD get treatment.
Maybe none of that will happen to YOU. But you know what, those kinds of things are happening to thousands of people in this country every freakin' day.
1) wait
OR
2) no health care
Well, guess which I would choose.
I'd too would rather have the wait for the services than none at all, it's a shame that there has to be a choice made.
Let me get this straight: the head of the largest pharmaceutical company in the country wants to contain healthcare costs. Am I missing something here? Because pharmaceutical companies are part of the problem, and if they truly wanted to rein in healthcare costs, they could have helped a long time ago. They've helped to block buying drugs in Canada, they wine and dine doctors lavishly, and they continue to overcharge for their products. This kind of talk from Big Pharma makes me nervous. And when I hear Democrats are meeting behind closed doors with industry people to craft the healthcare legislation, I know that the results will certainly NOT benefit average people, especially those who don't have health insurance now. Quid pro quo: if they like it, we won't. Kind of like when people go out of their way to advertise they are Christian businesses: you know you have to hold onto your wallet when you deal with them.
This is what you're missing: These two want to continue the same health INSURANCE system we have now... noticeably absent is any talk about nationalizing health care as all other civilized countries in the world have done for their citizens. Read between these lines:
-Provides affordable, comprehensive coverage for every man, woman, and child in America
-Builds on the strong foundation of employer-based coverage
-Encourages continued innovation in prevention, wellness, and disease treatment, and
-Lowers overall costs, and increases the value of each healthcare dollar spent.
It spells b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t and FU Americans.
"Am I missing something here?"
Not at all, if Government takes over health care pharma companies know they'll be able to get big bucks from Government because once something becomes that big . . . people can take advantage of it.
"We can change healthcare from what it is now--a quagmire of expense and frustration--to what we know it can become--a source of greater health, innovation and opportunity" ...
... by ELIMINATING the private, profit-making health insurance companies. They keep people off the rolls who might get sick, remove people from the rolls once they have a serious illness, and try to fight doctors and hospitals to deny care so they don't have to pay out claims.
They ought NOT to be allowed to put a price on peoples' LIVES!
They ought NOT to be allowed to play "God" with peoples' LIVES!
The "RIGHT-TO-LIFE" should be about MORALITY ... not MONEY!
EVERY man, woman and child in America SHOULD have the "RIGHT-TO-LIFE" ... the RIGHT to LIFEsaving medical treatment ... the RIGHT to walk or wheel into a doctor's office or hospital, with no questions asked and MONEY NO OBJECT!
No, the right to an affordable health care is not one of morality. it is one of common sense. Putting morality into the equation will only lead people to not have babies because they contain genetic markers for diseases we do not have treatments for but can detect during a simple prenatal test. And it will lead to an increase in the Right to Die movement which should be between a patient and a doctor and not left up to a church or government like happened with Terri Schiavo. Morality stay the hell out of my health care!
Wow! You have a really sick view of what should be called moral.
Single-payer, "medicare for all," is the only way to achieve affordable, excellent, health care for all. We've already got many sponsors in Congress for H.R. 676. We need to get more.
People with vested interests have been lying about Canada's wonderful system for a long time; it's not surprising that they're still lying, when their scam might be ended. Talk to real Canadians. They love their health care.
"Builds on the strong foundation of employer coverage"??? I have two jobs: classical musician and adjunct university lecturer. Neither provides any form of health insurance whatsoever. Most of the people I know can't get insurance from their employers. We need action, not corporate happy-talk.
"People with vested interests have been lying about Canada's wonderful system for a long time."
Really? From the father of govt healthcare in canada:
What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.
http://www
Why does this company below exist, or is this fake in you world? We dont want to replicate the canada system, we can do better - Its already been tried.
http://www
First of all, a Republican doctor is not where I'd go to get a recommendation about health care options. Second, who says we have to replicate the Canadian system. The French system is number one in the world. Do you think they might have something to teach us?
All of your scare tactics about people waiting on proceedures pale in comparrison to the millions in the US who either aren't getting ANY proceedures or care because they have no insurance, or are going bankrupt from medical bills even WITH insurance!
Surely in this great nation, we can come up with a system that treats everyone without bankrupting them in the process. Our health care system is dying. It needs total rehabilitation, not a bandaid.
I feel your pain....I'
Jebus Crist dude, just go to the emergency room and not pay, like everyone else.
I just hope that you and your family do not have any children who are born with chronic or terminal illnesses, under the Single Payer Health care system, because there may become a time when their disability or affliction costs are too high, and they are written out of the cost/benefit analysis computer program that is only intended to make everyone super human Charles Atlases, meanwhile increasing abortions due to the detection of prenatal birth defects that the system simply can not handle
Are the insurance company scare tactics pamphlets your only source of info on health care, or is this straight from the Rushes mouth?
I'v got a J.O.B. and pay almost $510/ month for insurance. I'm going to get my own for $210/ month. Privateinsurance. Look into it.
On this issue I would not trust a Republican as far as I could throw him or her. Nor would I trust a Dem who is in denial about all manner of "realities
The ONLY people I trust anymore are the ones who have not been asked for input. The feeble elderly and the disabled. Until they are asked how to manage THEIR chronic long term illnesses, they will be cast off like gangrenous limbs in the overzealous attempt to get costs as low as humanly possible under the cost/benefit analysis program
Is there any basis in fact for this paranoia, Placebo? What private insurance company will insure the disabled at an affordable rate?
Well let's just hope that enough "important and powerful" people get behind this. I find it truly unbelievable that the wealthiest country in the world can take such poor care of its people. I have made this statement before: being a single man who makes over $250,000 a year, I would certainly be happy to pay more, a lot more, in taxes if everyone in this country could have healthcare and see a doctor when they need to. People will say what a great thing this is - it is called common sense.
When entering the hospital with pneumonia 3 years ago, it took 4 hours to enter in the emergency room. Horrible, yes, but when you look to see that the ER was filled with so many people without insurance that could tno see doctors for basic illnesses that they had to wait until their health got so bad that they could not take it anymore. I am sorry - but if you can honestly watch that happen and not think that something needs to be done, then I think it goes a long way in saying the real problem in this country!
Thank you! You have a generous and truly patriotic spirit. I too am single, and have always been fortunate to have a good job with good health insurance. However, I have seen, as you have, the human costs of not having a system that takes care of all our citizens.
The irony about the cost of universal health care, is that it might not cost that much more than what we're experiencing now.
When we take into account the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and the cost of treating those who couldn't take advantage of those programs until they were at death's door, with illnesses that could have been prevented earlier, these are cost we're paying in addition to our own insurance.
When we then consider what we're paying now for insurance premiums and any deductables we might incur, it looks to me like we're paying a pretty high price for our current system.
Universal health care might just break even, but it might eventually reduce each person's burden. In any case, just as you've pointed out, it's the decent thing to do for all our fellow citizens.
Thank you for your post.
So many people who argue against some sort of universal health care, or insurance, like to say that you can simply "go to emergency at county [hospital]
I was at Parkland Country hospital here in Dallas one time, I was so sick with NO insurance. Do you know how long my wait was just to see a doctor?
24 hrs.
This is emergency. *emergency
Great post. It shows what a selfish, immoral people we truly are.
From the father of canadian health care, now says it's in crisis:
Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.
http://www
We can do better than this.
Here"s what our "free enterprise" health insurance industry gives us: 1. The insurance industry consumes 31% of every health care dollar (necessitating a billing clerk for every bed at Duke Hospital according to a doctor there, compared to two billing clerks at Canadian hospitals) . 2. Inadequate coverage for millions of people because of exclusions and exorbitant co-pays and deductibles. 3. An insurance industry that (a) cherry picks the healthiest among us and dumps the cost of caring for the rest on state and local governments and state managed high risk pools (thereby privatizing the profits from insuring the healthy and socializing the costs of caring for the sicker among us); (b) uses amorphous and ambiguous terms like "medically necessary" and "experimental" in order to deny claims even though the patients" doctors think otherwise; (c) seeks any way possible to deny coverage when a large claim arises (for example, a woman was denied coverage when she needed surgery because she failed to disclose a yeast infection when she applied for the policy years earlier); and (d) in unregulated states like Texas, raises rates often and precipitously to drive out people as they get older and their risk of getting sick increases.
The wingnuts seem to love the government-run military and the state high risk pools. Why don't they think the government can manage a risk pool for everyone more efficiently than hundreds or thousands of private insurance plans?
Our current system is anything but "free enterprise". Its a system that has so many laws and regulations for each state that there is no real competition because prices are set by State politicians.
These same companies payoff local state politicians to make even more money. The tax system supports this insanity.
A simple way to fix this is for the govt to insure everybody once bills hit over 100K per year via a tax. Get rid of the tax laws that favor companies, your job and insurance should never be tied together. Fed regulate instead of each state. Let 1000 insurance companies compete to drive down prices. Subsidize poor via food stamps type mechanism. Works in every other industry.
The alternative has been tried in Canada, and has failed already. People have to wait years for minor surgeries, lotteries to see doctors, and if you are too old you will never get healthcare. This is not the solution.
so you suggesting that my choices are:
1) wait
OR
2) no healthcare
Well, guess which I choose?
Depends on your situation. Do you have health insurance? Why not? Is it too expensive because of crazy government rules? Do you make less than 25K per year?
If all else fails, start an LLC and qualify for biz plans, they are usualy much cheaper in certain states than private plans, again stupid regulations that make somebody money.
REFORMING U.S. HEALTH CARE: SAVE LIVES, SAVE MONEY
The entire mainstream medical establishment must be overhauled, starting with the FDA.
1) A health care system that emphasizes PREVENTATIVE HEALTH CARE rather than RX drugs with side effects. The new system must include non-toxic "ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS" -- which are used with enormous success in Canada and Europe. Health Insurance must cover alternative treatments. Preventative health care, combined with non-toxic treatments such as OZONE, will DECREASE HEALTH CARE COSTS ENORMOUSLY, WHILE SAVING LIVES. Ozone DESTROYS CANCER CELLS but is illegal in the U.S. because ozone is a "natural" treatment and therefore cannot be patented. Profits before patients..
2) We must overhaul the entire mainstream medical system, starting with the FDA. The FDA uses police-state tactics against doctors and companies that provide non-toxic treatments which cannot be patented. FDA designates most "alternative treatments" illegal precisely because these treatments cannot be patented.
BOTTOM LINE: A revolving door exists between FDA agents and Fortune 500 RX companies. FDA officials disregard their own scientists' recommendations, approving drugs such as VIOXX (for arthritis), which had dangerous side effects such as heart attacks, strokes and death. FDA and Merck were aware of these side affects, yet both put money before the public's safety - which is the FDA's primary role. At least 100,000 citizens had heart attacks, and 50,000 of those citizens died. (See my book, Innocent Casualties: The FDA's War Against Humanity, for documentation and 2008 Updates at www.fdainf
To the previous poster, cancer surivival rates by country. Notice how much higher the US is in each category:
http://www
If canada is so great, how do companies like this exit and do well in Canada? Also, notice the wait times for procedures. My friend in canada told me her dog gets better health care than she does.
http://www
I don't believe a freaking word you say trotskylives. If your Canadian friend is unhappy with the health care system, tell her to move to the U.S. where she can pay $800. a month for an individual plan.
My friends in England who have money, buy their own health insurance; and that what should happen here. People who can afford it can pay for it themselves, but the the working and middle class of this country need universal health care NOW!
Uh, you do realize that if some people are paying for it (like the wealthy as you suggest here) and some people aren't, like the working and middle class of this country, than it is not truly universal?
So glad to see the open debate around this hot topic.
I agree with the majority of you who feel that insurance COMPANIES have no business in our MEDICAL CARE.
I am hoping that HuffPost takes my suggestion and creates a separate tab for the topic of Healthcare Reform. As the subject continues to appear in the news, and in the plans of the new Administration, I think we will have lots of responses from the public.
Can you just imagine if the American public got really passionate and made their voices heard when it comes to the future of healthcare reform???
We cannot settle for a plan that includes employers paying, or the insurance companies getting involved.
Without a doubt, every household in this country has an opinion on this topic. My dream is for Congress to be made aware of every one of them.
Anyone with me??
I'm with you. Let the for-profit insurance companies sell pet insurance to pet owners and nationalize health care for people.
We do need healthcare reform and we need it now. It can be paid for with !00% federal tax on fatty, low nutrient-value junk food, cigarettes and alcohol--if the afore mentioned item costs $4, with the 100% federal tax added the item would cost $8.
Like any pleasure, we will still occasionally buy the junk item, but we will think twice about doing so. We as a nation we will be healthier and the tax will pay the cost of national health care. Implementing such a tax structure spreads the cost. Such a tax would take the burden off the shoulders of business. They will not go bankrupt under the strain of health care benefits and their products will then be competitive with foreign products and we will have created millions of new jobs.
We need to rethink the last year of life. It is reported the most expense incurs in that last year. We can no longer afford to keep terminally ill patients alive. None of us gets out of this life alive, so why make it so costly to our family and the country?
Finally, it is immoral to have another octuplet situation like the one going on now.
A lot of people I know spend as much as $10/pack of cigarettes already.
But, I do agree whole heartedly that there needs to be a discussion and debate about the Right to die with Dignity, which seems to have gone under the radar after all of the hubbub of Terri Schiavo a few years ago
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
