Greg Davids Health Reform Questionaire

The August 24th edition of the Fillmore County Journal  contains a Greg Davids questionaire on health care on page 25.  There is a definite bias to most of the questions but I urge you to complete it and return it with comments. 

Letter to the Editor

Why do people have health insurance? People get health insurance so when they get sick they will be able to receive health care and get well. People when ill should be able to concentrate on getting well, not have to have a fundraiser to pay for their hospital bill.

The proposal set out by President Obama has been very clear; 1) it will lower costs, 2) guarantee choice and 3) ensure ALL Americans have access to quality, affordable care.

There will be no governmental take over of health insurance. No longer will someone be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition or some minor error on a health insurance application. President Obama and many Democrats have offered many compromises and at each offer, the Republicans say NO. The Republicans have put forth NO plan.

Health insurance reform means your care comes first, not insurance company profits.

Income Inequality

It is not possible to make health care affordable for many until we address the growing disparity in income. A progressive tax structure addresses the consequences of this disparity but it needs to be addressed at the source.

US Income Inequality Continues to Grow

Healthcare basics: Why we need a "public option".

While in the Minnesota Legislature from 2007-2008, I served on the Health and Human Services Committee. In 2007 I co-chaired a study group on Single Payer Healthcare systems.

Here’s a couple numbers to keep in mind in the current healthcare debate.

Most other advanced industrial countries (Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, others) have some variation of a Single Payer healthcare system. Most or all of the healthcare system is publicly administered. It is a universal system so that everyone is covered. It is paid for with taxes or premiums that go to the Government. In these countries, total healthcare care spending cost about 8-9% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In the U.S., about 40% of our healthcare spending is run by the government and a little over 60% is in the private sector. We spend about 17% of our GDP on healthcare, twice what these other similar countries spend. That’s a huge difference, the result of the for-profit, market based American system. The reason that U.S. spending is so high is because 25-30 cents of every dollar paid to insurance companies and HMOS goes to cover administrative costs. By contrast, with Medicare, which is a Single Payer system, the administrative costs are about 5%.

Clearly any meaningful reform that will actually lower the cost of healthcare for middleclass Americans will require a Single Payer system or the expanded “public option” that Democrats are pushing for. It’s also the only way we will free up enough money in total healthcare spending to provide universal coverage, which can also contribute significantly to reducing costs.

Why would expanded coverage reduce costs? A big cost driver in American healthcare is the very high use of emergency room services, which costs about 3-4 times as much as regular healthcare. A “public option” that would cover the 47 million U.S. citizens that do not currently have coverage would dramatically reduce healthcare spending by lowering the use of emergency room services.

We will be tracking the Pawlenty/Davids cuts as soon as they are made public. We will try to personalize the impact of those cuts. In the meantime we will be posting the cuts that have been made by the various local government agencies and the impact they are having on the Bluff Country citizens. We will also be exploring the arguments for and against a more progressive state income tax.