"What Kind Of A Nation Are We?" -- Congress Must Make Access to Care a Top Priority

What kind of nation are we when we fail to guarantee access to affordable health care for all of our children and others who are in need? And what kind of nation will we become if we continue to look the other way?

"Cover the Uninsured" week is an appropriate time to put our minds together and begin to examine these essential questions. Picture this. If we place all those with no health care coverage into one area, they would equal the combined populations of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana -- with room to spare for another Chicago. Not a pretty picture, is it?

But they are not all gathered in one place, of course. They live right next door, just down the street and on the next block. You see them everyday in the grocery store or at work. They go to sleep every night, as I do, thinking to themselves, "Is this the night I become ill and lose my home?" In the district I have the honor of representing in Northeast Wisconsin, impossible costs for health care are the most frequent cause of bankruptcy -- not wasteful spending.

This is not a pretty picture, and it is not the America I grew up in. I grew up in a community that believed if you work hard and play by the rules, you will not end up in the poor house if you, or your children, become ill. We lived in communities that cared for one another.

That's why, when I was sent to Congress, I refused to accept the health care benefits offered to me until everyone I represent has the same offer made to them. And that's why I've introduced the No Discrimination in Health Care Act, which will guarantee access to affordable care for all of us by:

• Forming the largest risk pools possible to leverage down prices for everyone;

• Forbidding insurance companies from discriminating against any citizen to pre-existing medical conditions, or simply put, if you are a citizen you are in;

• Openly disclosing all insurance policy prices, and allowing everyone to pay the lowest price available as payment in full for any policy or service.

As a physician with over 30 years of caring for patients, I've seen the devastating impact illnesses have on families without coverage. It's not a pretty picture, and it does not have to be that way. We can and we must do better, right here and right now in Congress. Turning down my taxpayer-funded health insurance as a Congressman may have been a simple gesture, but it was a measure of my total commitment to building a better future and a healthier nation for all of us.

"Cover the Uninsured" week is a good opportunity to ask ourselves, "What kind of nation are we?" But the answer must be longer term than a week. We must declare an end to discrimination in health care, everywhere in America, and recommit ourselves to the essential ideal that no one -- rich or poor, young or old, anywhere in these United States -- should be denied access to affordable care.

Comments

[magen]

Answer-

We are a nation of people who don't care that the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies have more influence over our government than "We the People".

[JohnWesleyHarding]

"We lived in communities that cared for one another."

This is the message all Democrats should be pushing to counter poisonous doctrine of laissez farie individualism / social Darwinism the right wing's been force feeding us for 28 years.

Great piece by the congressman, even if you don't agree with every detail of his proposal. Don't let perfect be the enemy of ghood.

[SamThornton]

Senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama have one thing in common with most members of Congress. They're all scared to death of the medical insurance industry.

Despite the fact that one of the largest components of spiraling health care costs is the increasingly high overhead exacted by insurers through burdensome administrative costs, obscene profit margins, and outright fraud, our politicians seem determined to keep them in the loop.

Why?

It's a question that answers itself once one begins to look at the amount of money the insurance industry dumps into the hands of national politicians through the legalized graft of political contributions.

Sadly, the bill Rep. Kagen talks about here, as well as the announced health care policies of all three presidential candidates, does absolutely nothing to address this problem. In fact, nearly all plans currently on the table wind up making the problem worse by granting insurance companies an even bigger market for their tender ministrations.

So called "Universal Health Care" is political doubletalk for "more of the same." A single-payer system that bypasses the insurance industry is the one sure measure to dramatically reduce the amount of money spent on health care in the United States.

[hopeless277]

What kind of nation are we? One word, BARBARIC.

[MrMike513]

Ditto to that, hopeless. It is morally obscene that we do not have a system that provides health care for all citizens. I get so sick of the "why should I pay for poor and lazy peoples' health insurance. These people are too stupid to realize that they ALREADY ARE paying for the uninsured in the form of high insurance rates, procedure costs, and prescription prices.