Time for Health Care for All on Medicare's 40th Anniversary

[Guest guest]

Holly Sklar | Time for Health Care for All on Medicare's

40th Anniversary

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/080205HB.shtml

 

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Time for Health Care for All on Medicare's 40th Anniversary

By Holly Sklar

Knight Ridder

Monday 01 August 2005

When Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law on July 30, 1965, former

President Harry Truman received the first Medicare card. He would be shocked

that 40 years later, more than 45 million Americans have no health coverage,

half of all personal bankruptcies are health-related, and lack of universal

insurance is increasingly hurting our economy as well as our health.

Truman proposed national health insurance for all Americans in 1945. He

said, " By preventing illness, by assuring access to needed community and

personal health services...and by protecting our people against the loss caused

by sickness, we shall strengthen our national health, our national defense and

our productivity. "

If Americans without health insurance were a nation, the population would be

bigger than Canada - plus Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire and Vermont. Canada,

like other industrialized nations besides ours, provides universal health

coverage.

Contrary to myth, the United States does not have the world's best health

care. It has the costliest.

In the words of Dr. Christopher Murray of the World Health Organization

(WHO), " Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an

American rather than a member of most other advanced countries. "

The United States is just No. 29 in the WHO healthy life expectancy ranking.

We lag Canada by nearly three years and Japan by nearly six.

The United States does worse than 36 countries in child mortality under age

five - well behind South Korea and Singapore.

The United States is No. 1 in spending. The Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports the United States spent 15 percent of

its Gross Domestic Product on health in 2003 compared to an average 8.6 percent

in 30 OECD countries.

The United States has fewer physicians, nurses and hospital beds per person,

and fewer MRI and CT scanners than the OECD average. Health Affairs reports that

Americans had more difficulty making appointments with physicians quickly than

people in Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, and were more likely to

delay or forgo treatment because of cost.

Lack of health insurance is killing many more Americans than terrorism. As

the Institute of Medicine documents, uninsured Americans get about half the

medical care of those with insurance. They receive too little care, too late,

get sicker and die sooner. For example, uninsured women with breast cancer have

a 30 percent to 50 percent higher risk of dying than insured women. Uninsured

car crash victims receive less care in the hospital and have a 37 percent higher

mortality rate than privately insured patients.

One out of three Americans below age 65 - 85 million people - lacked private

or public health insurance for all or part of 2003-2004. Millions more are

underinsured.

Average family health insurance premiums will reach a projected $14,545 in

2006, more than double the 2001 average.

Much health spending is squandered on the mountainous red tape, profits and

executive pay of private insurance and drug companies. As Dr. Marcia Angell

explains in " The Truth About the Drug Companies, " the highly profitable

pharmaceutical industry relies heavily on taxpayer-funded research.

The National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance of about 100

corporations, pension funds, medical associations, insurers, unions, consumer

and religious organizations, says, " Comprehensive health care reform is long

overdue. Every year that reform is delayed, tens of millions of Americans live

in peril, without health insurance; millions are harmed, and hundreds of

thousands die needlessly, because of sub-standard care. "

" The crisis in health care is the central economic problem facing America -

adversely affecting living standards, job creation and retention, wage growth,

the adequacy and viability of pension benefits " and the global competitiveness

of American business, says Coalition president Henry Simmons.

The Coalition calls for " health care coverage for all. " It offers four

different scenarios for universal coverage: employer and individual mandates and

subsidies; expanding Medicare and other public health insurance; creating a new

public program modeled on the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan; and

establishing a universal single payer, publicly financed program.

The first three scenarios would net $320 billion to $370 billion in savings

over the first ten years; the fourth scenario would save $1.1 trillion.

Like untreated cancer, the health care crisis is spreading throughout our

families and economy. It's time for health care for all.

 

 

Holly Sklar is co-author of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work

for All of Us (www.raisethefloor.org).

 

 

 

 

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