Health Care Is a Moral Obligation (VIDEO)
We have an urgent moral obligation to change the health care system in this country so that every American has access to affordable, quality health care.
Yet when I held a town hall in Pueblo on Saturday, I was greeted by a self-described "mob" with chants of "Health care...NO!" and "I hate Obama-nation."
While we should have a substantive conversation about health care, we cannot back down in the face of these intimidation tactics.
Watch the video from my town hall in Pueblo and sign my petition to support health care reform today:
Every Coloradan should have access to affordable, quality health care.
Any health care reform bill should control costs, allow people to keep their own medical plan and their own doctor, increase competition, and increase coverage -- all in a fiscally responsible way.
I also believe providing patients with a public insurance option -- that increases competition and drives down prices -- would help to achieve these goals.
Our families, small businesses, and economy need relief from the catastrophic impact of high health care costs. And we must start solving the problem this year.
Approximately 800,000 Coloradans are uninsured. More than 70% of the uninsured in this country are in working families. American consumers pay among the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world, and health care costs have gone up 80% in the last decade alone.
There is a better way to move forward. It is up to us to find and implement a workable solution to this problem. Our families, small businesses, and state and local governments cannot endure even one more decade like the last. We must do better.
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
My son is one of those uninsured Coloradans, and your constituent. So, yes a moral imperative is exactly what requires change from the unsustainable status quo, and I have a stake in your recognition of that fact. I am sure it is discouraging to have a room full of yelling people opposed to the necessary reforms. However, if you want to see angry people, let the insurance industry have its way. They will destroy our lives and our nation.
Yes.
Obligation yes. Moral obligation, no. It's simply something that the government needs to do. Morals shouldn't play any part in it.
Sen. Bennet, I disagree that your appointment by Gov. Ritter was a good one. I have not been impressed.
With your stance on health care, however, you just got bumped up a notch in my estimation. Thank you.
Thanks Senator, and kudos to our governor for a wise appointment.
How can a country consider itself a shining city on a hill when people go bankrupt because they can't afford the health care they desperately need?
I hope you will not allow the minority to speak for the rest of us simply because they are louder and ruder! Colorado wants single payer, but at the very least we want a public option!
Thank you thank you thank you!
I've been waiting to hear you say just these words! Because you were appointed and not elected, I knew very little about you and what you stood for! I agree with you 100%, and now I'm glad that you are my senator!
I don't want the minority to speak for me just because they are louder! Everyone that I know wants a public option -- I have insurance, but I believe it is a moral obligation to ensure that everyone has the chance to have the same!
I am totally for single payer because it is the only way to really cut the costs of the program AND it is the best way to get the Demographics for Autism and AlZheimers and AGENT ORANGE....
We have been lied to by the best of the Repugs....
Ok, let's get all the children insured first, then the Soldiers and their families (life long, no more of this agent orange or gulf syndrome lies) and then make Medicare Optional for people over 55 and keep the public option...f
And where are you going to get the money for all this?? The monopoly box?
I got bad news for you. There are several Dumbacrats that are in bed with the health care industry. Maybe if you opened your mind a bit, parked your socialistic views, and did some serious looking you'd see right through the frauds in What's Left of the Democratic Party aka Left Overs.
And by the way, just because there's some kind of gov't subsidized (run) option doesn't mean the prices are coming down any time soon. The market forces simply continue to look at the gov't as a cash cow.
Kind of what they are doing now.......
Single payer would immediately save $400 billion in annual waste generated by the private HMOs' sprawling billing, accounting, and actuarial bureaucracies (multiplied severalfold in every hospital, lab, pharmacy, and doctor's office) and profit skimming.
The nonprofit medicare-for-all systems in the rest of the industrialized world guarantee high-quality care to all (better outcomes than the United States) at an average of HALF the per capita cost. No price gouging, no profit skimming, no waste--just health-care delivery. The system would pay for itself in cost savings.
The profit system works well for selling things like cell phones and cars--things where you can choose to do without or to buy a cheaper model. But no human being can do without health care--the result is not simply buying a cheaper model but suffering and death. That's why civilized countries view health care as just as much their society's obligation to physically protect their citizenry as police and fire protection.
Let's say a fireman showed up at your burning house; he demands a copay of forty dollars before he will turn on the hose. You don't have it on hand. Would he be justified in letting your house burn to the ground? Do you place less of a value on a human life than house?
Access to health care must not be connected to employment status... If you disagree with this statement then you believe in a class system where only the most deserving (i.e.,$) have access.
Support HR676. It's a Single Payer system that is pro-business:
* Slashes at least 30% of costs off the top by removing private insurance overhead.
* Companies take health care expenses off their books. Stock value increases. They would be able to better compete internationally.
* Small companies could have access to higher skilled workers because previously they couldn't compete in the labor market by offering similar benefits.
* More entrepreneurial ventures will launch since they have more money and less unrelated risk.
* Dramatic drop in bankruptcies.
* Dramatic drop in lawsuits. Most of these lawsuits are simply to obtain money to cover health care if something interrupts their coverage.
* Reduced system complexity. Better efficiency due to fewer regulations.
* Savings from employees not having to fight with their insurers during work hours.
* HSA and MSA dollars flow back into the economy for goods and services.
* Additional money to spend from not having to carry "uninsured motorist coverage" on your auto policy.
* Contract employment is more viable for workers since they are guaranteed access to health care.
* People are covered when unemployed. No chance of being wiped out financially if you lose your job.
* Health care providers (doctors, hospitals, therapists
This helps
Health plans are not really insurance.
Insurance would be a policy to cover a catastrophic illness or accident. This is what insurance coverage should be. If it was it would be affordable to everyone but the most destitute (like bums on living in cardboard boxes destitute). Regular doctor visits would be far less than they are if this was the system. So even a trip to your family doctor would be affordable to most everyone. Another thing that could make costs even lower for routine stuff would be to allow nurses (RN's) to have more responsibility. Why my family doctor has to go to school as long as the brain surgeon is beyond me. My wife knows as much as my family doctor does about routine medical things.
And Sir, it is not your function to dictate to me my moral responsibilities. That is as arrogant as a pol can be.
Take you government health care and shove it.
That really was not necessary.
5% of our GDP or 2 grand for every man woman and child is the excess cost over the socialized models....
Senator, when you make as little money as I do and when you get the same kind of perks that I do, come talk to me. Until then, don't tell me what's my moral obligation.
It was never intended for the government to tell its citizens what their moral obligation was supposed to be.
That is to be decided by the community at large. Not determined by a 50%+1 vote. This is where this whole thing is soooooooooo flawed.
It is UNMORAL for Bush to give a tax cut of 60 grand a day to the richest 400 people in this country who also managed to double their income in 6 years....M
It never ceases to amaze me how liberals CONSTANTLY think their views are morally superior to ANYONE else on the planet.
Grow up and get a clue folks.....
So what does this have to do with the subject at hand?
Also, I believe the word is immoral.
So you think it's moral for the CEO of UnitedHealth Care to make $102,000 an hour based on how many claims they can deny and how many policies they can cancel for sick people?
What??????
Senator Bennet says that he champions a "public option," but he does not divulge the ugly details lurking behind this superficially attractive phrase.
Many commentators assume that the pub-op would be something like Medicare. But the currently trafficked, alarmingly shriveled version of the public option--as specified in HR3200 and destined for even further shriveling in House-Senate conference committee--is nothing like Medicare.
Unlike Medicare, it will be self-sustaining, not publicly funded; unlike Medicare, it will charge premiums and impose deductibles, making it unaffordable for the tens of millions most in need of help; unlike Medicare, it will have to negotiate provider fees on the same footing as HMOs--so no cost saving there, no cost savings of the single risk pool of single payer--according to the CBO, no cost savings period. And no significant expansion of coverage, because it will be open only to those not already covered by employers, and even for them not until 2013!
This is a joke, a gift to the HMO lobby, pure consumer fraud-- apublic option that is neither really public nor an option for most people!
Even Dr. David Scheiner — Obama’s personal physician for 22 years — said, “It’s a bad bill. No bill is better than this bill."
Please see this article from Physicians for a National Health Plan:
"Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold"
http://www
Why don't we just have a singer payer system then if a public option is not enough? We can hire all those poor, out of work Insurance industry CEOs to give advice how to run it then.
I quite agree. But the Democrats are undertaking a major snow job on the American people--trying to sell this phony reform as the real thing so they can set up this giant boondoggle for their health-lobby paymasters, who are the only real beneficiaries of this woefully awful Democratic pub-op mandate plan, the kind of strategy that has failed to control costs or expand coverage in every state where it's been tried.
Meanwhile, the one PROVEN reform, with a track record of successful high-quality universal coverage in the rest of the industrialized word--nonprofit Medicare for all--has been brushed aside by ALL the Beltway pols, so-called liberal Democrats included.
Why would you insist on pushing something that's bound to fail--the CBO has already told us it will not save money or significantly expand coverage--and suppress a proven solution? The proven solution would put the HMO middleman extortion racket out of business, and in Washington, money talks, and the welfare of the people walks.
That's the way it will be until and unless we all stand up and fight for single payer.
It's time to end our "risky experiment" of "For-profit health insurance". It's a proven failure.
Support HR676. It's a Single Payer system that is proven, pro-business and pro-people:
* Slashes at least 30% of costs off the top by removing private insurance overhead.
* Companies take health care expenses off their books. Stock value increases. Better able to compete internationally.
* Small companies could have access to higher skilled workers because previously they couldn't compete in the labor market by offering similar benefits.
* More entrepreneurial ventures will launch since they have more money and less unrelated risk.
* Dramatic drop in bankruptcies.
* Dramatic drop in lawsuits. Most of these lawsuits are simply to obtain money to cover health care if something interrupts their coverage.
* Reduced system complexity. Greater efficiency due to fewer regulations.
* Savings from employees not having to fight with their insurers during work hours.
* HSA and MSA dollars redirected back into the economy for goods and services.
* Additional money to spend from not having to carry "uninsured motorist coverage" on your auto policy.
* Contract employment is more viable for workers since they are guaranteed access to health care.
* People are covered when unemployed. No chance of being wiped out financially if you lose your job.
* Health care providers (doctors, hospitals, therapists
For-profit health insurance will never work.
These for-profit companies are operating at peak efficiency right now:
* They are taking more cash as profits each year.
* They are merging with other insurance companies to decrease choice.
* They influence state and federal governments to lock in current profits and twist the same system to generate even more $$$$.
* They are experts at hoodwinking "customers" into believing that are the only game in town (well probably because they are).
* They've manage to convince people that providers are the cost problem. Not the health insurance industry.
The health insurance industry is being operated PERFECTLY as a for-profit company. And these new congressional bills are going to make it even better for them. We are being sold out.
Check out HR676: http://joh
HR676 will get a floor debate and vote. It's time to bone up on it now.
It's about 30 pages long for the whole plan. A mere mortal can actually understand it.
What's being created in congress right now is a huge Rube Goldberg system that is so complex it allows corporations to continue to game the system. We are all being taken for a ride.
Check this site out and make a contribution if you support it:
http://hr6
This plan is a win-win for the citizens. People should actually read it before they decide it's a bad approach.
I agree that for profit insurance is a disaster. especially with so few insurers.
We're a country of 300 million people and climbing every day. The insurance companies are failing to keep up with the times.
However, getting the gov't involved is going to simply make things worse. If the gov't had a much lighter footprint on the health care industry, I'd be more than willing to be an advocate for some of these nutty ideas coming out of the HOR. But since the Speaker of the House may be clinically insane, I can't back them on this swiss cheese mess that is going to cost a LOT more than anyone cared to reasonably predict..
And it won't solve the problem.
Mr. Bennet,
Let's hear you propose increased funding to the FBI to elliminate the reported 10% fraud that plagues medicare.
How about you kill that talking point right now. The savings from elliminating fraud will pay for the increased funding.
Heck talk about Fraud, what about the billions and billions of underpaid or fraudulently avoided taxes of the MILLIONAIR
The idea is fine, as far as it goes, but Germany has found that a public option plan, does not provide enough funds. What works, is "an everyone in, noone out" plan. Best to look at France's system.
Please post a link that supports your claim.
Watch Sicko, read The European Dream.... They FIRED THEIR banksters.
For those who still don't get the idea of the "Health Insurance Exchange":
All employees in an employer sponsored plan will be allowed to keep their current plans under the legislation.
The State "Health Care Exchanges" will be set up for INDIVIDUALS and FAMILIES who do not have access to employer group Health Insurance Plans.
The "Health Care Exchange" will give the individual (or individual family) a choice of multiple Health Insurance Plans from which to choose.
There will be a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and Plan E Plan B, C, D, and E will be Private Insurance Plans while Plan A will be the "Public Option" (as an example).
Each Plan in the Exchange will have at a minimum the base coverage requirements to be considered a "qualified plan" under the bill but will have differing deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and other "bells and whistles" differentiators.
Premiums individuals or families would pay would vary with the plan in the Health Care Exchange they chose.
The Public Option is not a Plan being proposed to replace current Employer Group plans. It is the vehicle to provide competitiveness into the Insurance market for individuals and families.
This does not address the 30% that the insurance industry steals for denying treatment and refusing renewals to the infirm.
The to qualify to offer Health Care Insurance under the Bill Health Care Insurance ompanies will not be allowed to write new plans that exclude existing conditions.
Yes but every company under ERISA must be part of the exchange within 5 years -
http://mon
Misinformation.
"It is the vehicle to provide competitiveness into the Insurance market for individuals and families."
For-profit health insurance will never work.
These for-profit companies are operating at peak efficiency right now:
* They are taking more cash as profits each year.
* They are merging with other insurance companies to decrease choice.
* They influence state and federal governments to lock in current profits and twist the same system to generate even more $$$$.
* They are experts at hoodwinking "customers" into believing that are the only game in town (well probably because they are).
* They've manage to convince people that providers are the cost problem. Not the health insurance industry.
The health insurance industry is being operated PERFECTLY as a for-profit company. And these new congressional bills are going to make it even better for them. We are being sold out.
Check out HR676: http://joh
HR676 will get a floor debate and vote.
It's about 30 pages long for the whole plan. A mere mortal can actually understand it.
What's being created in congress right now is a huge Rube Goldberg system that is so complex it allows corporations to continue to game the system. We are all being taken for a ride.
Check this site out and make a contribution if you support it:
http://hr6
This plan is a win-win for the citizens. People should actually read it before they decide it's a bad approach.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
