U.S. Senate See Full Big Line

(D) J. Hickenlooper*

(R) Somebody

80%

20%

(D) Phil Weiser

(D) Joe Neguse

(D) Jena Griswold

60%

60%

40%↓

Att. General See Full Big Line

(D) M. Dougherty

(D) Alexis King

(D) Brian Mason

40%

40%

30%

Sec. of State See Full Big Line
(D) A. Gonzalez

(D) George Stern

(R) Sheri Davis

50%↑

40%

30%

State Treasurer See Full Big Line

(D) Brianna Titone

(R) Kevin Grantham

(D) Jerry DiTullio

60%

30%

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) Somebody

90%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Somebody

90%

2%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd*

(D) Somebody

80%

40%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert*

(D) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank*

(D) Somebody

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(R) Gabe Evans*

(D) Manny Rutinel

(D) Yadira Caraveo

50%

40%↑

30%

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
October 01, 2006 12:28 PM UTC

Federal Panel Urges Universal Health Care

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Mr. Toodles

http://www.nytimes.c…

“WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — A federal advisory panel said Monday that Congress should take immediate steps to guarantee that all Americans have access to affordable health care by 2012.

As a first step, the 14-member panel, appointed by the comptroller general of the United States, said, “A national public or private program must be established to ensure protection against very high out-of-pocket medical costs for everyone.”

The panel, the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, said Congress should create an independent “public-private entity” to define a basic set of health care benefits and services for all Americans.

While leaving many details to be worked out, the panel declared, “It should be public policy, written in law, that all Americans have affordable access to health care.”

The panel was created by the 2003 law that added a drug benefit to Medicare. Under the law, President Bush has 45 days to comment on the recommendations and offer a report to Congress. Five Congressional committees are then supposed to hold hearings on the proposals.

The citizens’ group went to great lengths to solicit opinions from average Americans, in addition to health experts. It tried to forge a consensus after listening to views expressed by more than 7,000 people at 98 community meetings in 37 states.

“This is a fresh approach,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who wrote the panel charter with Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

The number of uninsured Americans keeps growing despite fluctuations in the economy, and the report from the working group increases the chances that health care will be a major issue as candidates gear up for the 2008 presidential race.

Census Bureau figures show that 39.7 million people lacked health insurance in 1993, when President Bill Clinton took office. The number rose, to 44.3 million in 1998, and then began to decline. Since 2001, when President Bush took office, the number of uninsured has increased by more than 5 million, to 46.6 million in 2005.

The panel did not say how much its proposals would cost or how to pay for them. But, it reported, many consumers said they were “willing to pay more to ensure that all Americans are covered.”

Comments

13 thoughts on “Federal Panel Urges Universal Health Care

  1. The idea that the government or employers are responsible for the health insurance purchased by consumers is absurd. Americans need strong financial incentives to work and to achieve, and the ability to buy good health insurance is one of those strong financial incentives.

    It’s working today and will work better than any government program.

    1. This isn’t the time for knee-jerk free market orthodox arguments. To say that “it’s working today” in the face of the growing number of uninsured Americans and ever escalating medical and insurance costs is what’s absurd.

    2. Then why are we almost dead last among all industrialized countries in most measured of health?  Highest mortality rate in newborns, lowest life expectancy rate in both newborns and adults, highest amount of money paid for services, least modernized medical system…  It’s not working.

      Health insurance wasn’t started as a financial incentive to work harder, it was started as a financial incentive to hire on to companies short on workers.  If I work harder, I don’t get better health insurance; in fact, what I probably get is a higher co-pay and lower caps next year.

      If you’re worried about gov’t health insurance from an “it doesn’t belong in government” perspective, consider just how many days of work someone might lose over the course of their career because their child came home with an illness that could have been prevented if the child’s friends in school hadn’t been uninsured.  How much money could we save and how much productivity could we gain from such a system?

      The report recommends a public-private partnership arrangement.  One medical form, not dozens.  One payer, not hundreds of thousands.  One class of insured, not hundreds.  In business, economies of scale are sought to improve efficiency and lower cost; this plan will do just that.

  2. We might as well do it more efficently.  When people without insurance go to the emergancy room and can’t pay you and I pay for it in our higher rates as it is.  We might as well do it right and make sure that’s fair to all and we’d probably save money in the process.

    1. About 19 million are completly uninsured.

      Of 46 million so called uninsured, about 12 or 15 million are illegals and their dependents.

      Of 46 million so called uninsured, another 10 to 15 million have chosen to not obtain health insurance in the individual market or through employers. They’ve decided to game the system, hoping that if they need insurance, they can buy it before they undergo expensive procedures. An acquaintance went uninsured his whole working career. He remarried a woman who had insurance and made sure he was covered. A month later he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So for a monthly premium of less than $100 times the six months he lived, he received more than $50,000 worth health insurance coverage through his wife’s employer.

      So if you want to fix the system, require that everyone who has a job buy high-deductible catastrophic health insurance. Elminate all expensive mandated coverage.

      Why do we have so many uninsured (a small percentage of the legal population)?

      Because health care providers, insurers, employers and politicians have so screwed up the system to meet their financial and power needs that health insurance is uninfordable for lower-income workers. Take away the mandated benefits, allow the sale of catastrophic individual policies, and eliminate medical risk rating and you’ll find a lot more people will buy catastrophic coverage.

      Health insurance should not cover routine preventive care. It should insure people against catastrophic finanancial losses, not charge them to hold their money until they need routine maintenance or a new pack of birth control pills or Viagra. Auto insurance does’t pay for oil changes, but health insurance does, and that’s a very expensive way to pay for annual physicals and visits to primary care providers and alternative health care providers.

      1. The health insurance industry isn’t playing dumb in covering preventative care; for the cost of a checkup, the insurance industry gets vast returns on its investment in the early detection and treatment of serious illnesses.  Rather than treating people for late-stage heart disease, they can alter behavior and reduce the risk of heart attack, give people who might have been candidates for triple-bypass surgery stents instead…

        Of the millions who “choose” not to get insurance, most can’t afford it – like Wal-Mart employees who make $19,000 per year.  If I were making $19k per year, I’d decline medical coverage, too – especially since I might qualify for Medicaid instead.

        PS – I believe the 46 million figure is actual Americans, not including illegals.

        1. The Census Bureau counts all Hispanics, including illegals.

          Preventive care is important to individuals, and they should pay for it out of their pockets.  The way it’s financed by insurers is a scam. It’s like having banks charge you 10% on your money in your savings account until you spend it on a visit to the doctor’s office, and then you have a $30 co-pay.

          The system would work much better if preventive care were not covered by insurers. Trust me. (I know you won’t. You’ll believe what you believe, even if it makes no sense. Human nature, sadly.)

          1. If you could cite me some useful evidence to help me out…

            I’m open-minded.  But I’ve got doctors, the public, and now a panel constituted under the GOP-controlled Congress and Bush Administration backing me up so far.

            I don’t disagree that implementing your proposals would lower direct costs, but it would also drive indirect and time-of-service costs through the roof.  Since we already have ~33% of all bankruptcies caused by medical emergencies, I fail to see where your proposals would actually help.  Enlighten me, please.

          2. The advisory panel reflected the wishes of the public who know little to nothing about how to reform the health care system.

            Physicians are doctors, not medical economists, and everything they advocate is designed to line their pockets.

            They just want to be paid as much as possible as soon as possible. They deserve to be paid as much as the market will bear, and no more. They are making much more under Medicare and Medicaid and from today’s insurers than they were making before M/M were implemented in the 1960s.

            In other words, the combination of socialized medicine (M/M) and regulated markets (private insurance with monopolistic providers and insurers works for them just fine. Some whine, but don’t listen to them. American docs are among the best paid, if not the best paid, in the world.

            It should be easy for everyone to figure out that there are huge administrative expenses involved when insurers collect premiums for primary care and pay them out to providers. I don’t know the profit margins on that business for the insurers, but they have to be substantial. And the adminstrative costs are big on preventive and primary care because there are milions of tiny transactions, compared with the claims on acute care.

            So let’s say your preventive and primary care costs per year are $1,000, and the insurer takes $200 to $300 of that. Wouldn’t you rather have that $200 to $300 stay in your pocket?

            The health care insurance markets are corrupted by the politicians and lobbyists who control M/M and by employers who buy the health insurance that is best for their bottom lines, not the insurance that is best for their insured employees and their dependents.

            Nobody should be surprised that politicians do what it takes to get them elected to cushy Congressional jobs and that emploiyers do what’s best for their careers, bonuses, investors and, maybe, their employees. It’s human nature to take care of number one.

            I know. It shouldn’t be that way and you wouldn’t be that way. But it is that way and you don’t buy my health insurance, I’m afraid.

            So it’s logical that the people who will do the best job of buying the health care insurance that is best for them in regulated markets are the people who will be covered by that insurance and pay for it. Nobody will look out for you the way you will.

            While consumers can’t play doctor on themselves, they can make better financial decisions for themselves than anyone else.

            All you have to do is look at the spending and taxing decisions made by Congress in every session. Dumbed down, corrupted and illogical decisions come out of Congress and the bureaucracy, and that’s why health care is expensive, health care premiums are soaring and you’re unhappy with the world and  health care markets as they are.

            Will politicians give up their power to screw up health care?

            Nope.

            Politicians want more power to vandalize our lives.

            1. You Say: “Physicians are doctors, not medical economists, and everything they advocate is designed to line their pockets.”

              Yea…those greedy, uncaring, self serving, no-goood doctors!  Why they don’t give a rats ass about the effictiveness and eficiency of healthcare.  And they couldn’t have ANY knowlege or insight into how to manage healthcare.  Afterall they are just stupid greedy doctors.

                1. But that statement was to full of stinky hot air to pass up.  And while I am not a doctor, I do have one very close friend and several aquaintances who are.  Their first modivations are to heal people.  They are NOT cutting people open out of greed.  If so they would have gone into some other discipline that did not rack up $100,000 of student debt.  (Most likely something like medical economics, insurance, or lobbying for the med industry.) They all agree that the current system is on the edge of ruin and that preventative medicine (for all) and getting the uninsured the healthcare they need before illness becomes cronic is crutial to fixing the system. Your pay-to-play system does not make this possible for the working poor.

                   

  3. the health care system in the US is very reactive, not preventive.  Preventative care saves us money, as PR referred to, and saves the insurance companies money. 

    Skeptic, I think the people you are speaking about who are able to afford or opt out on insurance are employed, educated and able to weigh the risks.  As Cyclops said, the losers in the existing system are the working poor – an increasing number in the US (immigrants, students, elderly, low income workers…)

    EVERY person in the US should have access to affordable insurance.  This isn’t a ‘what’s good for the system’ solution – it is a what’s good for our country, our citizens. 

    Americans need to make some hard choices, however.  We can’t have it all.  Medical priorities need to be established. Last week, my wife spent all night caring for a man who is an alcoholic, drug user and smoker.  Hepatitis, cancer, you name it he had it.  Terminal patient and the family said no matter what, revive him if he cores.  This is one small example of what happens everyday in every city in the US where we could use resources better.  No easy answer but this panel is a step in the right direction. 

    Unfortunately, there is no political will to tackle this issue so we’ll be posting about this for a long time to come, I’m afraid.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Gabe Evans
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

39 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!