[Peace-discuss] No to Obamacare, Yes to Medicare for all

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Saturday, September 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
	Medicare for All: Yes We Can
	by Holly Sklar

More Americans die of lack of health insurance than terrorism, homicide, drunk 
driving and HIV combined.

Grandma could be dead from lack of health insurance before she turns 65 and gets 
Medicare - 80 percent of first-time grandparents are in their 40s and 50s.

America is the only country that rations the right to health care to those 65 
and older.

Lack of health insurance kills 45,000 American adults a year, according to a new 
study published in the American Journal of Public Health. One out of three 
Americans under age 65 had no private or public health insurance for some or all 
of 2007-2008.

You can't go the emergency room for the screening that will catch cancer or 
heart disease early, or ongoing treatment to manage chronic kidney disease or 
asthma. And even emergency care is different for the insured and uninsured. 
Studies show uninsured car crash victims receive less care in the hospital, for 
example.

Even with health insurance, many Americans are a medical crisis away from 
bankruptcy. Research shows 62 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical, 
a share up 50 percent since 2001. Most of the medically bankrupt had health 
insurance - the kind insuring profits, not health care.

Health insurance executives don't worry about going bankrupt from getting sick. 
Forbes reports that CIGNA's CEO made $121 million in the last five years and 
Humana's CEO made $57 million.

We're harmed by health industry and political leaders following the Hypocritic 
Oath: Promise a lot, and deliver as little as possible.

Wendell Potter, CIGNA's chief of corporate communications until quitting in 
2008, testified to Congress, "The status quo for most Americans is that health 
insurance bureaucrats stand between them and their doctors right now, and 
maximizing profit is the mandate." He said, "Every time you hear about the 
shortcomings of what they call 'government-run' health care, remember this: what 
we have now ... and what the insurers are determined to keep in place, is Wall 
Street-run health care."

Premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance jumped 131 percent 
between 1999 and 2009 - from $5,791 to $13,375 - hurting businesses, employees 
and families.

Contrary to myth, the United States does not have the world's best health care. 
We're No. 1 in health care spending, but No. 50 in life expectancy, just before 
Albania, according to the CIA World Factbook. In Japan, people live four years 
longer than Americans. Canadians live three years longer. Forty-three countries 
have better infant mortality rates.

One or two health insurance companies dominate most metropolitan areas in the 
United States.

Health industry lobbyists and campaign contributors have gotten between you and 
your congressperson so they can keep getting between you and your doctor. There 
are 3,098 health sector lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill - nearly six for every 
member of Congress.

As Business Week put it in August, "Health insurers are winning." They "have 
succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no 
matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to 
President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."

President Obama should listen to his doctor. Dr. David Scheiner was Obama's 
doctor for 22 years in Chicago. On the July 30 anniversary of Medicare, Scheiner 
said, "I have never encountered an instance where Medicare has prevented proper 
medical care ... Insurance companies frequently interfere and block appropriate 
care."

Scheiner belongs to Physicians for a National Health Program, which, like a 
majority of Americans, favors Medicare for All - 58 percent favored "Having a 
national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an 
expanded, universal form of Medicare-for-all" in the July 2009 Kaiser Health 
Tracking Poll, for example.

Tell President Obama and Congress, Yes we can have Medicare for All. Rep. 
Anthony Weiner's amendment would substitute the text of the Expanded and 
Improved Medicare for All Act (HR 676), which has 86 co-sponsors, for House 
legislation HR 3200. Like the even worse Baucus bill in the Senate, HR 3200 
would feed for-profit insurers more customers without providing the universal 
health care Medicare could provide at much lower cost.

It's time to stop peddling health reform snake oil.

Medicare for All won't kill Grandma, but it may save her children and grandchildren.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service

© 2009 Holly Sklar
Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for 
All of Us" and "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future." 
She can be reached at hsklar at aol.com.