Health Care

Your illness should never be someone else's profitability.

While everyone has access to health care coverage, not many can afford the premiums. Over 47 million citizens in our own country are without health insurance. Today's health insurance policies -- with high deductibles, co-pays, and many exclusions -- offer little protection during a serious illness. Medical bills are now one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in our country.

Our health care system is failing.

• People working for insurance companies are making life and death decisions about your treatment from remote offices.
• Insurance companies refuse to pay for services, or even deny life-saving treatments to people who need them.
• Denied coverage if you have a "pre-existing condition".
• Doctors offices are refusing to accept certain insurances due to the amount of processing vs the amount of return.

The bottom line is this: Good doctors are going out of business and nurses and hospitals are overwhelmed. Every day people are dying for no other reason than lack of a health care system that actually provides health care.

The time for talking about a better health care system is over - it is time for action.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the insurance company bureaucracy. This needless administration consumes one-third of Americans’ health dollars. Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.

Under a single-payer system, all Americans will be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.

We can also reduce the cost of overall health care by focusing on key areas such as:

• Preventative medicine. We can reduce the overall cost of health care significantly as it is usually cheaper to prevent than to cure.
• Searching harder for health care solutions. We must invest in research to assist in finding treatment and vaccines for all areas of our health. Cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, HIV, etc. This should include using all tools available in society today, e.g. stem cells.

Our health care system is in need of serious repair, if we work together, we can create something that works for all Americans.