Yes We Can! Long Island 2012This piece comes from Sue Hornik. To see what you can do to help pass healthcare and insurance reform legislation, click on YWC!LI’s Healthcare tab.
1. The public option is truly an “option.” If you choose to remain with your current insurance provider, you can do so and nothing will change. If you choose the public option, you will still be able to keep your own medical providers, just as you can with Medicare.
2. The public option is not dependent on employment. You cannot be refused coverage or dropped because of pre-existing medical conditions. This is currently not the case with private insurers.
3. The focus of the public option is patient care. As businesses, the focus of private insurance companies is to make a profit. They may do this by raising premiums, reducing or eliminating patients’ procedures, or shortening hospital stays regardless of doctors’ recommendations.
4. The US spends more than any other industrialized country in the world on health care, yet we rank only 37 in positive health care outcomes.
5. The proposed public option is more cost-effective to administer. Administrative costs for Medicare, for instance, average less than 2 percent, while the administrative cost for private insurers average 28 percent of total operating costs.
6. Waiting time to see a doctor will be no different under the public option than with private insurers or Medicare. Because everyone will be insured, people will see their doctors proactively instead of waiting until they are seriously ill. Government subsidies to states for emergency room visits by the uninsured will then be freed up to help finance the public health care option. This reform will free hospitals and emergency rooms to handle true emergencies.
7. A public option health plan would encourage competition and lower costs, which we all support. Massachusetts’ health reform, which is struggling with costs, has no public option to provide needed competition. (It is also not representative or a good model because all insurance companies in the state are nonprofit.) We already have Medicare and Social Security programs, which are public options, so charges that a public option for the uninsured will make the US “socialist” is a ruse to scare Americans.
8. With the Federal government as the public’s bargaining agent, it can negotiate lower costs for medical services and medications.
9 Opponents of healthcare reform fail to mention the cost of no reform. Total health care spending was $2.4 trillion in 2007 and is projected to soar to $3.1 trillion in three years! In 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5.0 percent; for firms with fewer than 24 workers, the increase was 6.8 percent. The average employee contribution to company-provided health insurance has increased more than 120 percent since 2000.
10. Insurance companies are currently spending $1.4 million A DAY to lobby Congress and to run ads using fear tactics against health care reform.
This is a brilliant way to reform health care in America.
Health care has always been an issue with me and my family. I’ve been afraid of being laid off or leaving my job because of the need for good health insurance.
The Insurance companies can fight their evil fight trying to turn folks against Public Option. But if people would just read what it’s all about, there’s nothing to criticize. The Insurance companies are all about money and profit, not public safety. These people disrupting the townhall meetings are ill informed on what Public Option is all about. They need to read the facts and discern for themselves.