The recent blizzard crippled Washington, DC and provided quiet moments and lots of time to think. Sitting in my office in an almost empty NEA building for four days, with the federal government shutdown and the nation's capital almost completely bowed to Mother Nature, I had time to step back from my daily work to think about the current health insurance reform debate.
Professionally, I have been working on health insurance related issues for many years as NEA's Director of Collective Bargaining and Member Advocacy; my work has been more intensely focused on health insurance reform for well over a year now. I had to ask myself if my interest in health insurance reform is because it is part of my work responsibilities or perhaps because it puts me right in the middle of an exciting debate and gives me an opportunity to visit the White House.
I thought about those questions and more as the historic snow blanketed Washington. Part of my answer to these questions came to me through my brother, Hap, who was diagnosed with a serious form of leukemia and has had a series of treatments that continued recently with a bone marrow transplant at the Mayo Clinic. Hap is very fortunate because he has good health insurance. When I talked to him a while back he asked: "What do people without insurance do?" I didn't answer his question then because I was more interested in how he was doing and because the question was rhetorical and the answers all depressing.
According to recent studies, every day we don't pass health care reform, more than six thousand people lose their health insurance; nearly two thousand families face bankruptcy as a result of medical bills and more than 120 people die because they can't get the health care they need.
These are alarming figures, especially when you personally know someone facing these circumstances as most of us do. I'm glad my brother isn't one of those statistics. It's easier to accept that there are 46 million uninsured people in our wonderful country when you just think about them as statistics. But it's more difficult to accept that number when you think that people who don't have health insurance are mothers, fathers, sisters, neighbors and yes, they are brothers.
Another part of the answer to my question came to me from thinking about my past life as a first grade teacher in Tyler, Minnesota. I know that some 8 million children in the United States lack health insurance; I remember teaching some of those children, who often were forced to come to school and sit in class when they were too sick to learn. NEA members across this country work with many of the uninsured children and know firsthand that these children miss more school days or show up to class less ready to learn than their classmates who come from families that have health insurance. Our members know that reforming health insurance and ensuring that students have access to quality health care coverage is, at heart, an education issue. It's about our children coming to school ready to learn so that they have the knowledge they need to lead in our 21st century global society.
The final part of my answer came to me from stories of NEA members who report everyday that the continued rising cost of insurance is not sustainable for them, their school districts, or their state governments. They see their out-of-pocket costs for coverage rising annually at 10, 20, 30, or even 40 percent. Many of them are choosing to drop coverage or take home less money in order to afford coverage. All of this at a time when there are headlines that read, "Report: Top insurers made 12 billion in profits last year, dropped 2.7 million people," in the February 11 edition of Politico.
So, after doing a lot of thinking while watching the quiet snow fall, it is clear to me, clearer than ever in fact, that we definitely need health insurance reform in the United States, and we need it now. All of the uninsured, including America's children and the 46 million mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers cannot wait any longer for political maneuvering to end and the mistruths promulgated by reform opponents to be corrected. Thursday's bipartisan health care summit at the Blair House should not be about making headlines or political grandstanding -- too much is at stake.
We've come too far to turn back now. The Blizzard of 2010 was historic and so is this opportunity to bring about reform to America's health care system. The peaceful snow days allowed time to reflect on what I've known professionally for a long time and gain a deeper personal understanding of just why America needs health reform now and why we cannot afford to wait.
(please note income tax is around 20% though you can earn £6700/year before you are taxed anything)
If you're employed
£110 a week (the 'earnings threshold' $167) and up to £844 per week ($1285/ 70k/year )you pay 11 per cent of this amount as 'Class 1' National Insurance
you also pay one per cent of earnings above £844 a week
you will pay a lower amount if you are a member of your employer's pension scheme
Your entitlement to the following benefits from National Insurance contributions:
Jobseeker's Allowance (unemployment benefit)
Incapacity Benefit (if you can't work for long periods due to illness or injury)
contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
State Pension
Widowed Parents' Allowance
Bereavement Allowance
Bereavement Payment
Plus Universal Healthcare, old age care, Housing benefit up to £1800/week, etc etc etc etc, And the UK is the most expensive in Europe due to our thrall with the USA and private care, You should have a look at France or Sweden! If you're a millionaire you have all the same options for private as the USA, Because of Universal healthcare, statistically the doctors see a far wider range of health complaints from the diaspora, thus The USA spends the most, but is only in the 38th position in the league of effective health care. The citizens of the USA deserve better. Free at delivery healthcare!
Mr. President: could we have televised sessions explaining how VA systems save so much money while delivering better rated care than anyone else in the county?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.longman.html
Would the VA’s; do what it ever takes to keep people healthy, evidence-based care be a good model for creating a public option?
All 300 million people in the US could receive free public option health care, delivered from government VA system styled hospitals, paid for with sales tax revenues instead of insurance premiums, and it would save $1trillion dollars every year from the $2.6trillion spent last year.
Of course not everyone in the US would choose to use public care but the cost savings illustration is dramatic.
Having two systems to choose from; either a public option, or the other a private option, could serve everyone.
Public option government care would be all inclusive covering everything primary, inpatient, outpatient, long-term, mental, ophthalmology and dentistry care including all medications.
Employers could optout of paying for employee care.
States could eliminate all healthcare costs.
The federal government’s entitlement disasters of Medicare and Medicaid could easily be salvaged without bankrupting the federal government by using a national health care system to deliver high quality care and medications through government systems at a fraction of the costs now being devoured by private systems.
I can not believe this circus and am about to give up on any hope or change, President Obama.
I can not believe this circus and am about to give up on any hope or change, Presiden Obama.
Government agencies scored the cost of a universal health care system and have predicted cost savings due to the cost savings associated with universal preventative care. If we cannot pass legislation to insure all adults lets at the very least endure that all minors have health insurance.
I have a clerk with no medical training deciding if I can have treatment
This untrained person denies my claim Then I have to fight with the doctor on the bil
The bill is denied it isn't coded to their liking - the bill is recoded and sent back-
then the insurance clerk sends a bill back to me to tell me that they will only pay a certain amount of the bill- Even though the doctor is a in network doctor
One Doctors visit and a year later this is still unresolved.An excellent point was made on
the Premier- If you have millions of dollars you can get the best treatment in America- but if your the average citizen you can't-