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In My Opinion: Health Care: A Case of Political Malpractice
Imagine if President Bush had spent the time and effort that he has in pushing his private account scheme for Social Security by instead addressing a genuine social and economic crisis.
By that I mean the exploding costs and declining availability of health care.
Had he used some of his political capital in mobilizing Republican majorities in Congress, holding town meetings and jawboning business leaders about health care reform, there's no doubt we would be on the way to transforming our dysfunctional medical insurance system.
That would mean saving lives, bolstering business competitiveness and reducing budget costs for government at all levels. It would have given Mr. Bush a truly positive legacy.
Forty-five million Americans today have no health insurance, and the continued surge in medical inflation will drive that figure up to 51 million by the end of next year, predicts the National Coalition on Health Care—the largest and most broad-based alliance of business, labor, and health care organizations advocating reform. CWA belongs to the coalition along with many of our employers such as Verizon, AT&T and General Electric.
Eighty percent of the uninsured actually work fulltime, but either they have no employer-provided coverage or they can't afford their share of the premiums.
Uninsured Americans do get sick, of course—even more often than others since they don't get checkups or preventative care. And usually their treatment comes when acute problems take them to expensive hospital emergency rooms. Almost two-thirds of their medical bills are left unpaid and the costs are passed along to taxpayers and to insured citizens in the form of higher premiums.
Subsidizing the uninsured adds $922 per year to employer-provided medical premiums, a figure that will continue to mount, according to Families USA. This creates a vicious cycle: The more uninsured, the higher the costs, causing more employers to drop coverage or shift costs to workers—hence even more uninsured, and so on.
CWA members in every industry are familiar with the growing pressures for health-care givebacks in each round of bargaining. And those retirees who now enjoy paid health coverage have to wonder how long that will last, especially since CWA and other unions by law can't compel employers to bargain for retired members.
The fact that the United States is the only advanced country without a national health care program puts business at a competitive disadvantage, as General Motors' recent problems (largely due to bad management) have highlighted. Health insurance costs add $1,500 to the price of every GM car, as compared with $186 for a Toyota. U.S. carmakers spend $6,500 per worker for health care, whereas employer costs in Canada, which has national health care, are about $800 per worker, according to Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.
What we see today with tens of millions lacking health coverage is a moral disgrace, and it's also economically suicidal. The health care crisis is stifling productivity, driving outsourcing, marginalizing jobs, lowering living standards and eroding the tax base in every state.
And what if I told you it would be cheaper for our nation to adopt comprehensive reform than ignore this issue?
The National Coalition on Health Care recently released an analysis of four possible scenarios for universal health insurance indicating that each would save our nation tens of billions of dollars while extending quality medical coverage to every American (see Health Care Reform: Covering Uninsured Could Save Billions).
The scenarios ranged from employer mandated insurance, to expansion of existing public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, to a program similar to the current program for federal employees (including Congress), to a publicly financed "single payer" system.
The various plans were analyzed by one of the most respected health care economists, Kenneth Thorpe, who chairs the Health Policy and Management Department at Emory University.
In each scenario, the initial cost of covering the uninsured-$75 billion-would be offset by net savings after 10 years of between $125 billion at the low end and $1 trillion (for the national "single payer" model).
Clearly, the failure of our leaders to address the health care crisis is political malpractice.
It's in the immediate interest of every CWA member and retiree to elevate this issue in the political arena. Our elected leaders heard us when it came to jeopardizing Social Security with a crazy privatization plan. Now let's tell them to focus on the crisis that threatens our jobs, our paychecks, and our very lives - health security. I urge you to write or e-mail your members of Congress today, and tell them their response will dictate how you vote in next year's elections.
By that I mean the exploding costs and declining availability of health care.
Had he used some of his political capital in mobilizing Republican majorities in Congress, holding town meetings and jawboning business leaders about health care reform, there's no doubt we would be on the way to transforming our dysfunctional medical insurance system.
That would mean saving lives, bolstering business competitiveness and reducing budget costs for government at all levels. It would have given Mr. Bush a truly positive legacy.
Forty-five million Americans today have no health insurance, and the continued surge in medical inflation will drive that figure up to 51 million by the end of next year, predicts the National Coalition on Health Care—the largest and most broad-based alliance of business, labor, and health care organizations advocating reform. CWA belongs to the coalition along with many of our employers such as Verizon, AT&T and General Electric.
Eighty percent of the uninsured actually work fulltime, but either they have no employer-provided coverage or they can't afford their share of the premiums.
Uninsured Americans do get sick, of course—even more often than others since they don't get checkups or preventative care. And usually their treatment comes when acute problems take them to expensive hospital emergency rooms. Almost two-thirds of their medical bills are left unpaid and the costs are passed along to taxpayers and to insured citizens in the form of higher premiums.
Subsidizing the uninsured adds $922 per year to employer-provided medical premiums, a figure that will continue to mount, according to Families USA. This creates a vicious cycle: The more uninsured, the higher the costs, causing more employers to drop coverage or shift costs to workers—hence even more uninsured, and so on.
CWA members in every industry are familiar with the growing pressures for health-care givebacks in each round of bargaining. And those retirees who now enjoy paid health coverage have to wonder how long that will last, especially since CWA and other unions by law can't compel employers to bargain for retired members.
The fact that the United States is the only advanced country without a national health care program puts business at a competitive disadvantage, as General Motors' recent problems (largely due to bad management) have highlighted. Health insurance costs add $1,500 to the price of every GM car, as compared with $186 for a Toyota. U.S. carmakers spend $6,500 per worker for health care, whereas employer costs in Canada, which has national health care, are about $800 per worker, according to Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.
What we see today with tens of millions lacking health coverage is a moral disgrace, and it's also economically suicidal. The health care crisis is stifling productivity, driving outsourcing, marginalizing jobs, lowering living standards and eroding the tax base in every state.
And what if I told you it would be cheaper for our nation to adopt comprehensive reform than ignore this issue?
The National Coalition on Health Care recently released an analysis of four possible scenarios for universal health insurance indicating that each would save our nation tens of billions of dollars while extending quality medical coverage to every American (see Health Care Reform: Covering Uninsured Could Save Billions).
The scenarios ranged from employer mandated insurance, to expansion of existing public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, to a program similar to the current program for federal employees (including Congress), to a publicly financed "single payer" system.
The various plans were analyzed by one of the most respected health care economists, Kenneth Thorpe, who chairs the Health Policy and Management Department at Emory University.
In each scenario, the initial cost of covering the uninsured-$75 billion-would be offset by net savings after 10 years of between $125 billion at the low end and $1 trillion (for the national "single payer" model).
Clearly, the failure of our leaders to address the health care crisis is political malpractice.
It's in the immediate interest of every CWA member and retiree to elevate this issue in the political arena. Our elected leaders heard us when it came to jeopardizing Social Security with a crazy privatization plan. Now let's tell them to focus on the crisis that threatens our jobs, our paychecks, and our very lives - health security. I urge you to write or e-mail your members of Congress today, and tell them their response will dictate how you vote in next year's elections.