John McCain's Health Plan - Don't Get Sick in America

John McCain's Health Plan - Don't Get Sick in America
By Rose Ann DeMoro



McCain's main healthcare ideas are increased corporate competition to supposedly limit rising costs and tax credits to encourage the uninsured to buy insurance. Neither will do any more than perpetuate the dismal status quo.

Once-a-year tax credits mainly help the healthy and well off, the same people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts he supported. Those who most need coverage will still be unable to afford premiums that now average over $12,000 per family, not including skyrocketing deductibles, co-pays, drug and hospital charges and other fees.

McCain's view that increased competition will constrain costs is equally suspect. Under the stewardship of a market friendly administration the past decade, premiums have jumped 87 percent, far outpacing inflation and wage increases. Insurance companies don't compete by delivering more care or lowering prices. They compete by harvesting more customers and slashing their costs.

The most extensive assessment of McCain's record has been compiled by the AFL-CIO which warns that his plan "undermines existing employer-based health care and pushes workers into the private market to fight big insurance companies on their own. It will reduce benefits, increase costs and leave many with no health care at all."

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Finally, nothing in McCain's approach stops the disgraceful abuses intrinsic to the insurance-based system, including the routine denials of needed medical care and refusal to assure coverage to people who are sick or have pre-existing conditions. The insurance companies will continue to make out like bandits while the fraying of the social safety net grows and ever more people are abandoned.

To sum it all up, the McCain campaign could just as well use these simple marketing slogans for their plan: Don't Get Sick in America, or You're On Your Own.

http://www.calnurse.org/media-center/in-the-news/2008/march/john-mccain-s-health-plan-don-t-get-sick-in-america.html


Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.

Currently, the U.S. health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 46 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) 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 would 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.

Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.

A single-payer system would be financed by eliminating private insurers and recapturing their administrative waste. Modest new taxes would replace premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business. Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php