In the early 60s, my oldest son suffered a near-fatal
illness that lasted for several years and involved several lengthy
hospitalizations. We were a working-class, one-income family, and we survived
this crisis in good financial shape with health insurance from Blue Cross/Blue
Shield which was non-profit at that time. Most working-class families had
high-quality affordable health insurance then. Since then, corporate profit and
advertising has entered the health-care business and created a system too
expensive, too complex, too inefficient, too unaffordable, and too inaccessible
to be sustainable. Profit, not consumer
health, is now the major concern of the health-care industrial complex.
The Affordable Health Care Act has been economic
salvation for many families I know by improving affordability. It has not and
cannot solve the other problems created by profit-driven market forces.
The Patient’sFreedom Act proposed recently by Senator Susan Collins to replace the ACA makes the system way
too complex for consumers by offering 3 system options for states to choosefrom. One option is to keep the ACA as is, which is not a good choice. There
are still way too many uninsured, underinsured, or with too high deductibles to
make it truly affordable to all. Both of the other 2 options would reduce benefits
to consumers and do not solve other major problems in the current system.
Both my personal experience and my years of research
into health-care persuades me that the most reasonable, humane, and best
solution to benefit consumers and to solve the problems is to replace Obama
Care with the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, which “would vastly simplify how the nation pays for care, saving
hundreds of billions of dollars on administrative overhead that could be used
to improve patient health, restore free choice of physician, and eliminate
copays and deductibles. . . . [N]early 6 in 10
Americans, 58 percent, support a Medicare-for-all approach, with the Gallup poll
finding that 41 percent of Republicans favor replacing the ACA with ‘a
federally funded health care program providing insurance for all Americans”
(). Such
a program could automatically enroll everyone at birth and be funded by affordable
premium payments to the Medicare system instead of to profit making insurance
companies. Until this can be done, we must not repeal
the ACA which would throw the whole system into even more chaos than it is in
now.
Published, February 1, The Star Herald
