By now many of us are all too familiar with the troubling facts informing our need to take action on healthcare reform: forty-six million Americans lack health insurance and tens of millions more are underinsured and at risk of financial ruin; family budgets are squeezed and businesses are less able to compete globally because of skyrocketing healthcare costs; and despite our world class hospitals, our healthcare system still fails to prevent millions of avoidable, deadly heart attacks and strokes.
The time to act is now. But still, the "who" and "how" of health reform is up in the air. That is why we heartily support President Obama's plan to address healthcare reform immediately and to evaluate any reform proposal against eight commonsense, nonpartisan principles: protecting families' financial health, making health care coverage affordable, aiming for universal coverage, providing portability of coverage, guaranteeing choice, investing in prevention and wellness, improving patient safety and quality of care, and maintaining long-term fiscal sustainability. These are principles that everyone -- Democrats, Republicans, Independents, mayors, business and labor -- can and should rally around.
We need everyone's participation and everyone's good ideas if we are to reform the fragmented system we have today. In our respective roles as Mayor and leader of the nation's largest union of nurses, doctors and healthcare workers, we have worked tirelessly to improve the health care of our city residents and fellow New Yorkers. New York City has supported our award-winning public hospital system which serves more than 450,000 uninsured patients; invested in the nation's largest primary care electronic health record network linking more than 1,100 doctors with real-time, prevention-focused electronic health records; connected thousands of residents with public health insurance and small businesses with affordable coverage for workers; and engaged in innovative public health campaigns to reduce smoking and promote wellness. In New York City as well as in major cities around the country, SEIU healthcare workers have dedicated themselves to expanding healthcare coverage and improving the quality of care in hospitals, clinics and community health centers.
We know these efforts are making a real difference in the lives of New Yorkers and working families everywhere. But in this time of economic emergency, our country needs and deserves more than partial solutions that are fraying under the weight of state and local budget crises. Our families, our communities, and our businesses need Washington's committed leadership to fix our broken healthcare system.
We see the momentum growing. With each passing week, the Obama administration and key members of Congress have begun to build the foundation for major healthcare reform legislation. In a little over sixty days, they have expanded SCHIP coverage to more children, dedicated new funding to improve healthcare technology and invest in our healthcare workforce to aid America's economic recovery, and approved a budget that establishes a critical down payment on real healthcare reform.
And yet, some of the hardest work is still to come, and our challenge is to keep Congress focused on achieving a real and comprehensive solution -- and not to walk away when the going gets tough. In this time of crisis, we have to be willing to try new things and keep focused on our goals to make health care more affordable, effective and accessible.
In the past few months, we've heard a lot about how government has to step in when a company is 'too big to fail.' Well, this push for healthcare reform is too important to fail. It's too important to our cities. It's too important to our nation. It's a challenge we can't turn from -- and it's an opportunity we must seize.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Health Care
SEIU - Service Employees International Union
I wish others would follow.
these will not work because the fed. is not thoroughly in control. TOP to BOTTOM
The “Emergency Room” has already been nationalized. No one can be turned away. The care of emergencies should be federally funded with no copay. The non emergency should be sent down the street to the primary care clinic, like the one at your neighborhood Wal Mart. Emergency Department staff should be salaried under a program of federal subsidy to hospitals.
Medical care other than primary care and emergencies should be through referral from primary care or an emergency physician. This should be funded by a program of national health insurance supplemented with a small copay.
Prices of pharmaceuticals and supplies should be negotiated by government.
We should include tort reform, with caps on punitive judgements and “pain and suffering”, and with claims paid by the government.
A parallel system of private insurance could provide enhanced coverage for those who desire it.
We can have enhanced universal access to primary care, emergency care, and advanced treatment, without rationing by ability to pay, spending less than we do now.
Our statistics will come into line with other developed countries.
Dwight Burdick, MD, FACEP
Some (with money) pay out of pocket. Some have private insurance. Some have public funded medical care. Some have blended modes of payment. The rest have the “Emergency Room”. Everybody gets basic care, at least in the time of crisis.
What we don't have is a system of health care.
The result is more spent per capita than any other developed country, and statistics ranking us near the bottom.
We desperately need a system, designed with quality as the driving force. It is less expensive to design a system to prevent failure, than to treat failures in a poorly designed system. Illness and injury represent system failures. Treatment accounts for a disproportionate share of the health care dollar.
A properly designed system would emphasize prevention through education in the home, school, workplace, and primary care office. This is where the bulk of our money should go.
Prevention can be enhanced by spending public money on recreational facilities, sidewalks, pedestrian malls, bicycle lanes, and public transportation. Prevention can be enhanced by taxation. Tax tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and fast foods at least adequately to offset the cost of treating their damage to our health. Prevention can be enhanced by mandating evidence based medicine, especially in the primary care office. This will decrease the inappropriate use of pharmaceuticals and interventions, and increase the appropriate use of counseling. Prevention can be enhanced by carefully designed electronic medical records focusing on prevention.
The “Emergency Room” has already been nationalized. No one can be turned away. The care of emergencies should be federally funded with no copay. The non emergency should be sent down the street to the primary care clinic, like the one at your neighborhood Wal Mart. Emergency Department staff should be salaried under a program of federal subsidy to hospitals.
Medical care other than primary care and emergencies should be through referral from primary care or an emergency physician. This should be funded by a program of national health insurance supplemented with a small copay.
Prices of pharmaceuticals and supplies should be negotiated by government.
We should include tort reform, with caps on punitive judgements and “pain and suffering”, and with claims paid by the government.
A parallel system of private insurance could provide enhanced coverage for those who desire it.
We can have enhanced universal access to primary care, emergency care, and advanced treatment, without rationing by ability to pay, spending less than we do now.
Our statistics will come into line with other developed countries.
Dwight Burdick, MD, FACEP
Canadian doctors are expected to do more, and earn less.
Instead of arguing that we need more nurses because doctors are too expensive, why not ask why doctors are so expensive?
By eliminating the for-profit private health insurance industry, HR 676 will save enough money to cover everyone. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume nearly one-third (31%) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for ALL Americans. You know, like the coverage our elected officials and their families enjoy.
Single-payer healthcare for all ... it will free-up our pocketbooks, those of the cities and states that are having a difficult time covering their large expenditures in providing for their current employees and those in retirement ... and we come together in this nation for each other.
What if we manage to completely extinguish the insurance industry so they are no longer an issue, and the government provides us with direct health care. What do we then do to address the concerns that many of us have regarding the absolutely abysmal quality of what care we receive, when there is no reform of the FDA and the approval process in distributing drugs to doctors, hospitals, etc, that are doing serious harm to our bodies, or downright killing us?
This is news!
Finally some news!
American Healthcare was reformed?
Holy cr*p, when did this happen?
Not ONE more dollar.
Our government already spends $850 billion per year, which translates into $2750 per citizen per year. That's MORE than enough to deliver universal health insurance. It's more than Britain spends per capita to do it.
Essentially the ONLY argument for a single payer, centralized system has to do with cost efficiency, so show us that you are capable of delivering that cost savings by using the money you already spend.
Stop squandering hundreds of billions to buy off seniors. Stop squandering billions catering to the doctors' unions. Stop the media campaign against insurance companies, who have nothing to do with how the government runs their own insurance. Stop all the stuff that is driving up the cost of delivering government health care in the first place and take responsibility for the HUGE amount of money we already entrust to you every year.
Doesn't Britain have seniors, veterans, and poor kids too?
How about Canada? They seem to manage to cover all these populations for roughly the same amount we spend just to cover seniors veterans, the disabled, and poor children.
And despite the millions they'll spend trying to convince people the SOCIALISM medicine is a "cure" worse than the disease, ask anyone with Medicare if they're willing to give it up? How about social security? I read that John McCai (despite the mulit-millions of household income) still accepts his social security check.
Let's start a conversation about eliminating those two programs and watch the PROTESTS then. Want to see the "rabble roused" that'll do it!
As for healthcare companies continually raising premiums, I would like to see an investigative report document increase in premiums to increase in CEO salaries and bonuses. There will be a correlation.
Your ignorance at somehow thinking that's a GOOD thing is exemplary of the thinking that's holding back universal, affordable health insurance.
My two key "mantras" in this debate are-
-fairness is a moral imperative
YET
- more is not always better in medicine (which more US health consumers are recognizing)
If we attend to these core principles we will be ok
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
Thanks
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa