As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Tom Daschle will lead the Obama Administration on healthcare reform.
I encourage him, to come to Daily Kos to hear how many most of us are bravely trying to survive in a nation which still regards healthcare as a privilege not a right.
Before I go any further, Senator Daschle, I urge you to read Tales of a Family Doctor. It is one of the finest accounts of our crippled healthcare system and is written by a doctor in the trenches day-in and day-out. It will give you much needed insight about why single payer healthcare is essential if we are to really reform our horribly broken system.
Then, Senator Daschle, as I said, please join us here to learn first hand how hard working, tax paying, middle class Americans (many terribly overcharged and underinsured) are still barely able to access affordable healthcare.
We're talking about making affordable and guaranteed healthcare a right not a privilege in the United States of America.
We're not talking about extending private health insurance to more Americans. This just throws more money into a broken and discredited system.
If you've been following Senator Daschle, it seems that he's the right person for this intensely difficult job.
A disclaimer: As I've said in the past, it boggles my mind that we are still in the discussion phase of whether or not as a nation we have the financial resources to provide affordable and guaranteed healthcare to all our citizens. But this is our reality, so chat away.
That said, if you listen to him you've got to come away feeling (certainly I do), that he is keenly aware that our for-profit healthcare system is both unsafe and unsustainable.
With each passing day, it becomes more and more apparent that the American people have been betrayed in virtually every facet of our daily lives. A lethal combination of greed, stupidity and crass political horse trading, has left all of us vulnerable, exploited and sitting ducks for slime merchants in every critical U.S. industry from banking to education and healthcare.
The healthcare system has had eerily similar warning signs of corruption, legislative incompetence and indifference--signs similar to those which preceeded the housing bubble and subsequent crash. Health insurance in the United States is a cash machine, designed to maximize investor (Wall Street) profits at the expense of being the guardian of our health and well being. Our so-called public servants have done nothing to protect us, except offer more of the same.
As you and I know, Senator Daschle, the American people have been left on our own to fend off the extraordinary abuses of the predatory delay, deny and deceive health insurance industry. Americans are facing the worst economy in fifty years. Unprecedented layoffs--some are predicting unemployment will go to 10% or more, how will these people access already unaffordable for-profit premiums? They won't.
Some will do exactly what I had to do to maintain my own junk insurance. When I was hit with an 18.5% premium increase at my renewal a month ago, I was forced to go further into the world of the underinsured. I took a higher deductible, higher co-pays and less reimbursement. Like most Americans, despite being "insured", I am one illness or injury away from financial ruin.
Some regulators have undoubtedly been aware of the problems and wanted to take steps to rein in abuses, but were prevented from doing so by the political power of the insurance industry. We reached a new nadir when Max Baucus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, assured this criminal industry they need not worry about "oppressive regulation" going forward.
Listen to Daschle here. He is incredibly articulate, but can he go against the the powerful forces determined to maintain the status quo?
Now, whether Senator Daschle and President Obama will junk our junk insurance for single payer, the only reform which will strengthen the U.S. healthcare system over the long term, is the subject of another diary. As a pragmatic observer, I don't think this is going to happen on Day One. Though if you fed Daschle a drop of truth serum, I have no doubt that this student of healthcare would agree in a heartbeat that single-payer is the only viable long term solution for all that ails us.
Big questions remain. If the for-profit insurance industry remains as the centerpiece of our healthcare system, will they be regulated, or will they be allowed to maximize profits by denying care?
Here's a brief view of the Obama/Daschle healthcare reform working group. Senator Daschle, it's terrific that your plans include total transparancy. Soliciting web input is a great first step. Now, how about adding some citizen activists to the healthcare reform transition panel? And after the inauguration, ongoing citizen input will be even more important.
The thought that healthcare reform could in fact become some sort of "insurance in name only type scheme", terrifies me and virtually all Americans, Senator Daschle. Making Romneycare the law of the land would be a travesty and fraud against the American people. How will you address the reality that even insured Americans, (which includes almost of us who can still afford to pay the skyrocketing premiums), are one illness or injury away from financial ruin and bankruptcy?
Do you understand that as a nation we neither need nor want more of the same? Mandating that all Americans purchase for-profit health insurance isn't going to solve our national catastrophe. We need affordable and guaranteed cradle to grave healthcare. This is not a radical or "liberal" idea, it is what any civilized society must provide all its citizens and it's long overdue in the United States.
One final idea, Senator Daschle.
A healthcare Team of Rivals. It would include:
- A lot of us would feel our ideas will actually be considered if a strong single payer advocate has a seat at the table. I'd like to suggest the best person I know, Rose Ann DeMoro the executive director of the California Nurses Association. Here's what she thinks of the AHIP healthcare proposal.
- Please bring Congressman John Conyers into your inner circle. There is no finer and more knowledgable healthcare advocate than John Conyers. If you need an update on why small tweaks to our dangerously broken system won't work, please watch this.
And an urgent request to Kossacks:
If you have a minute or two to spare today, could you make a call and send a quick email for single payer healthcare?
Here's all the information.
Join with dozens of national organizations and unions to call your
congressperson on Monday, Dec. 22.
Urge him or her to co-sponsor and help pass HR 676, national single payer
health care. (We will have greater impact by doing this on the same day.)
If he or she is already a co-sponsor of HR 676, ask her or him to sign on
again in the new Congress.
If you cannot speak directly with the congressperson, ask to speak to the
assistant who handles health care. Leave a message, request a response,
and include your contact information.
It's good to call representatives in their home districts at this time of
year. But if you prefer to reach them in Washington, call the US Capitol
switchboard: (202) 224 3121. Then ask for your representative.
(If you need to look up a congressperson, go to http://votesmart.org/ and
put in the zip code.)
Fax or call your federal Representative. If you don't know your congresspersons' district office phone/fax number, please follow these five easy steps:
- Go to www.VoteSmart.org.
- Enter your ZIP code in the top left of the page.
- Click on a congressperson.
- Click on "Complete Contact Information" under their photo.
- Their district office phone number and address are under their photo.
Also, contact Senator Kennedy at his in-district office. Phone: 617-565-3170 / Fax: 617-565-3183. Senator Kennedy is proposing health care legislation early next year, and he needs to know that we want it to be single-payer.
One More thing before you break out the cookies and egg nog:
Please take another brief action that can help tremendously to put single
payer on the national agenda.
Write to noah@moveon.org to urge that Move On place HR 676, national
single payer health care, at the center of their campaign for universal
health care.
As always, thank you for helping to make healthcare a right not a privilege in the richest country on the planet.