Excerpt: Howard Dean’s Prescription for REAL Health Care Reform

[Joanne98]

The following is an excerpt from Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform by Gov. Howard Dean M.D. with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir (Chelsea Green).

Much has been made of the 48 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. Their stories are heart-rending, and it’s a scandal that in the wealthiest nation on earth, we do not cover everybody. No other industrial democracy in the world puts up with this embarrassment. But the debate on healthcare reform—which is coming to a peak once again—should also focus on the fact that many Americans who do have health insurance don’t find out that it doesn’t adequately cover them until them until it is too late.

What’s the real issue?

The real issue in the debate over healthcare reform is not whether we should have “socialized medicine” or not. It’s whether we should continue with an extraordinarily inefficient system that today features a private insurance industry that takes large amounts of money out of the healthcare system for shareholders, administrators, and executives, while denying people the basic coverage they have paid for.

How to frame the debate

The debate about healthcare reform is not a debate about how much a role the government should play. Instead, the debate should focus on this simple question: Should we give Americans under 65 the same choice we give Americans over 65? Should we give all Americans a choice of opting out of the private health insurance system and benefiting from a public health insurance plan? Americans ought to be able to decide for themselves.
What Americans Should Demand of Real Healthcare Reform

•Choice: Everyone should be able to choose between a public health insurance option—like Medicare— or a private health insurance option.
•No forced moves: If you like the health insurance coverage you have, you should be able to keep it.
•Coverage options for small business: Very small businesses should have the option of handing over health insurance coverage for their employees to a public or private plan subsidized by the government.
•Everybody in, nobody out: Public and private health insurance plans should turn no one away based on illness, pre-existing conditions, or other criteria.
•Similar premiums for everyone: Despite age or illness, all Americans should be able to opt into a public or private healthcare without wide discrepancies in cost based on age or previous illness.
•More options, not fewer: Healthcare reform should expand Americans’ healthcare choices, not reduce them.
•Financial protection: A public health insurance option is more affordable because it’s more efficient. This protects families’ financial health.
•Fewer of your healthcare dollars spent on overhead: A public health insurance option is much cheaper to operate and will help reduce non-health-related overhead costs.
•Universality: Everyone other than those already covered by Medicare or Medicaid should have the option to join a public plan.
•Portability: A public health insurance plan should cover you no matter how many times you move, no matter who you work for, and no matter where you live

http://www.progressivebookclub.com/blog/2009/06/29/excerpt-howard-deans-prescription-for-real-health-care-reform/

[msongs]

1. howard dean is a real american patriot nt