This post is going to be a major difference from the usual things. Frankly, it is an introduction to a new and different blog that I will be creating in the coming weeks. In my case, the idea of a single payer universal health care plan was almost always in my mind. I was a military dependent and then enlisted myself when I was age appropriate. So, I have been exposed to essentially single payer health care for a good portion of my growing years and into young adulthood. We always felt secure in knowing that our health situation was always going to be cared for because of our being in the military (US Air Force for both me and my dad).
When I left the Air Force and entered the commercial job market, I was fortunate enough to gain employment in a small California desert community where there was still the old company town environment. The insurance was provided by the company, the hospital and medical clinic were owned by the two companies in the valley. So, our medical care was still pretty much a worry-free deal. But then I left that area, moving back across the country and encountered the present world of corporate health care industry operations.
Many years ensued for my family and I (wife, one daughter and two sons), in our health care situations where we spent many hours discussing the rightness of care that the insurance clerk was denying their responsibility to cover. Both sons played football all though middle school and high school, with the older son continuing his football play into the first two years of a college athletic scholarship. Luckily for us, those schools had insurance to cover most injuries that the players might encounter, but kids are kids and adults get sick. And I kept thinking that there had to be a better way for the health of American citizens. But alas, could find nothing out there that even remotely resembled the health care of my military days. For example, birth of daughter (Chennault AFB, Lake Charles, LA.) total cost out of pocket $1.98 for meals my wife had just prior to the delivery and post-delivery. Birth of eldest son, China Naval Weapons Station, Ridgecrest, CA) $2.75, the Navy charged a bit more for meals for the delivering mother. Finally, birth of third child, youngest son, (American Potash & Chemical Corp Medical Center, Trona, CA), $1200.00 my cost and the insurance deductible. Oh yeah, that was for more than the meals. But even then, it was far less than what medical care in hospitals and outpatient care costs for the same thing.
Several years passed, encounters of higher and higher costs along with more reticence by insurance companies to pay for care as they “promised”. One exception that stood out was during my tenure at a major computer manufacturer in Minnesota. A new type of medical care was presented by this company, it was new to the industry as well. HMO or Health Maintenance Organization. When originally conceived, this was a very good approach. My younger son was having hearing problems and ear infections. We took him to the HMO center for our company’s insurance HMO plan. They operated on my son’s hearing (ear drum, etc) for five plus hours. His hearing was almost totally restored and imagine our excitement when he asked that the tv sound be turned DOWN. When I went to check him out, there was no copay bill to cough up. The HMO covered the surgery, housing and meals.
Of course, that was years ago, and it was a brand-new coverage plan. To my knowledge gained from the experiences of relatives and friends who use the HMO type health coverage, that is no longer the case these days the HMO is just a different type of regular health insurance and the majority of these medical groups do not deliver quality care and patient compassion. Simply, like the rest of the health care industry companies, collect the money and deliver minimally acceptable care. After years of fighting with insurance company clerks and managers, I encountered a new plan in the making.
In 2003, in my early days of political activism, I discovered the Congressman from Michigan, John Conyers and his brand new legislative bill for health care. It was then called a National Health Insurance program, eventually morphing into the Expanded Medicare for All. Bill HR-676 had just 20 cosponsors in the first reading back in 2003.
At each congressional session, Mr. Conyers would update the bill content to reflect the current environments and resubmit it for consideration and hopefully getting it to the House Floor for debate and passage. Through year after congressional year, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Kucinich of Ohio and a growing group of likeminded Congressional Representatives signed on.
Mr. Conyers fell ill and died and the 2017 version of his HR-676 was his last submittal and in truth the memorial to his efforts to bring true universal health care to ALL American residents of this nation.
As a longtime supporter of Mr. Conyers and his HR-676 bill, I made sure to download and retain many copies of the changes and each version as it was released. Today, while it is still available, I understand, now the Congress has reassigned that bill number to another pieces of legislation from a different congress person, and the thrust of her bill has nothing whatsoever to do with focus of the original HR-676 by John Conyers. I frankly admit that I do not understand the reasoning behind the issuance of that bill identifier to that congressperson for her legislative bill but is certainly has put a huge hurdle in bringing that Conyers effort to provide universal health care to the American people.
We are way Behind!
Bear in mind that rest of the developed world has comprehensive universal health care, and those programs covered every single citizen/legal resident of those countries. Most of these countries have had UHC for DECADES, while we have been worried about “socialism” or adverse impact to our health care or health research. Point of Fact, none of those cares are valid or worthy of refusing UHC, they are all propaganda from the medical industry including (not medical professions or facilities) the insurance corporations and other shadowy external forces, including much of the Congress and we as a nation have fallen for the sales pitches from those sources, hook line and sinker.
So, while the rest of the developed world enjoyed better health outcomes, no health care anxieties, NO medical bankruptcies, better live birth rates, more effective treatments, solutions, procedures and medications, the United States fell further and further behind the rest of the developed world for health conditions of its citizens. We are well behind these countries in almost every single aspect of health, from overall longevity of adults to lower successful birth rates even the overall happiness factor of these counties as opposed to the United States.
Actually, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), at this time France has the best health care in the world and most of European countries are right there alongside them. Japan leads the Asian nations in their UHC program, and even Cuba has a better health care coverage for their people, than the United States!
These countries spend less than half of the costs for health care that we do in the USA. AND they have better outcomes, happier citizens, and the fear of leaving a job because of health insurance simply does not exist in those nations. A recent study and report from the Commonwealth Fund that analyzed the positions of the developed nations regarding the health-related lifestyles of their citizens, was not complimentary to the Unites States. I will provide a link to that report within this blog post.
Some quotes or the actual highlight listing from that Commonwealth report is as shown below:
Highlights
- Health care spending, both per person and as a share of GDP, continues to be far higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. Yet the U.S. is the only country that doesn’t have universal health coverage.
- The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions, the highest maternal and infant mortality, and among the highest suicide rates.
- The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions and an obesity rate nearly twice the OECD average.
- Americans see physicians less often than people in most other countries and have among the lowest rate of practicing physicians and hospital beds per 1,000 population.
- Screening rates for breast and colorectal cancer and vaccination for flu in the U.S. are among the highest, but COVID-19 vaccination trails many nations.
The link to the actual report is here:
Please read this entire report if you can, it is very enlightening. We are not the greatest, especially in the area of our citizens and their health care.
And even back to 2014, this organization rated the United States thusly:
Where we rank comparatively with the rest of the world.
The United States ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives, according to this Commonwealth Fund report, despite spending far more of its GDP on health.
FUND REPORTS / JUN 16, 2014
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally
Reading this report, from 8 years ago, and sadly from later editions, we have not gained, but instead lost ground in the overall health of our US citizens. More’s the pity.
In the near future, I will be bringing live a new web site that will focus on this Single Payer Universal Health Care program and why the United States and its people should stop with the rabid propaganda and implement the entirety of the HR-676 written by Representative John Conyers and supported by well over 140 members of the House of Representatives. This bill should be brought to the floor of the House and passed following debate. I will provide information and links to this website to my fellow senior citizens and others as I can find. My prayer is that we see at least, the beginning of a full SPUHC for all of the residents of the United States of America, before my time on earth is over.
The Congress, especially the Democrats in Congress should determine the best person to pick up the baton of John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich and the rest of those members who have supported this bill from it’s inception in 2003.
WELL PAST TIME!
Misty Lady Thought and Comment 