By Stan Gold
July 25, 2009
The healthcare program that is being pushed by MoveOn.org and Obama is a cruel hoax. Massive financial and medical care failures are being built into the system. It does not control future costs, or provide comprehensive medical care for all Americans, or give patients freedom of choice in selecting medical practitioners.
As long as the U.S. policy continues to be unique in the world,— among industrialized democratic nations,— in insisting on having non-productive “middlemen” (the corporate health insurance industry) come between healthcare funds and healthcare practitioners, — real, permanent healthcare reform is impossible.
We do not have a funding “shortfall” in financing a national healthcare program for ALL. We have a national funding SURPLUS! That surplus currently exists in the enormous profits, unconscionable CEO pay packages, multiplicity of huge advertising budgets, multiple sales and marketing staffs, and other wasteful overhead costs expended by America’s health insurance corporations “middlemen”.
In the U.S., thirty cents out of every dollar (30%) earmarked for medical care, never reaches any medical practitioner, if that dollar is first filtered through an insurance company. In stark contrast, the total overhead costs of the entire U.S.Medicare program is only three percent (3%).
The solution to real healthcare reform has been tried, tested, and been successful for many decades in over 20 capitalist, democratic countries on three continents. The solution is Single Payer Healthcare. Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) authored a Single Payer Healthcare bill, HR-676. It currently has 85 co-sponsors in the House.
Polls show that 72% of Americans want a national, not corporate, medical coverage plan. Over 60% of doctors polled said that they could accept such a plan. The 17,000 doctors who are members of the Physicians for a Nation Health Program are lobbying for Single Payer Healthcare. The California Nurses Association strongly supports Single Payer Healthcare. Thousands of unions and faith based organizations are active supporters.
Why does MoveOn.org work to protect the devastating results of the for-profit insurance industry, instead of being in the vanguard of the progressive movement to get the U.S. to join the rest of the developed world in creating lasting healthcare reform? I would appreciate your response.
For a healthier tomorrow,
— Stan Gold
Stan Gold is a member of the Steering Committee for Progressive Democrats Sonoma County and writes to MoveOn in response to one of their recent action alerts.
