News & Updates

Our current medical insurance system costs too much to sustain. It leaves out too many people and provides inadequate care for too many others. We’ve been shouting those facts for years and the nation’s leaders finally seem to be poised for action. But will the medicine that’s being contemplated cure the disease?

Right now that seems unlikely.

Republicans seem intent on blocking any reform and the President’s reform suggestions are too timid to result in the complete overhaul our healthcare system needs to succeed for healthcare consumers.

Unfortunately the debate among leaders is focused on whether to include a public option in the mish-mash of high-cost, ineffectual existing medical insurance plans. Sadly this debate ignores the plight of working men and women who face impossible labor negotiations because employers and employees can no longer afford the portion of wages and profits that must be set aside to pay for healthcare benefits.

President Barack Obama’s proposition is that we keep the current system and add a public option designed to pick up the perennially uninsured. Ironically opponents claim this will hurt insurance corporations because people will flock to the public, less costly plan. Imbedded in this fear is the realization that the public wants radical change. Unfortunately, the President’s suggestion represents only an incremental compromise that fails to address the core problems - the rising costs, ineffectual operation and wastefulness of the current health care system.

There is a solution -- a single payer health care plan.

Despite public demand, the need for a single payer plan is being excluded from the top-level discussions, even though it has been introduced in Congress -- HR 676, legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers.

If a single payer plan were adopted, it would mean a single public or quasi-public agency would organize health financing, but the delivery of care could largely remain private, as with Medicare. This would eliminate the current near-monopoly by private insurers that waste consumers’ money on overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay.

This also would eliminate the need for doctors and hospitals to maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the paperwork that baffles and frustrates us as consumers.

Now is the time to seize the day.

Healthcare reform is on the horizon, we as consumers, we as citizens and we as organized labor must work to persuade our nation’s leaders to adopt a single-payer plan. This is the way to control healthcare costs, and to provide quality healthcare for all.