Why We Need an American Plan for Health Insurance Reform

We need a truly American plan for reforming health insurance. Such a plan would do the following:

* Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control;
* Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option (like Medicare or the plan that federal employees have);
* Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care.

People right here in our community and all over the country have signed on to these principles. They are the ones our President says he will use to evaluate whatever plans Congress comes up with.

You say you didn't vote for Barack Obama. Well, if you support these principles, consider it your civic duty to work for them anyway.

I believe that we Americans, at our best: care about people, take responsibility for ourselves and others, and strive to make ourselves and the world a better place. Working for health insurance reform is consistent with who we are because we believe in freedom and fairness for everyone, not just the powerful.

We need to make sure that health insurance reform helps our government fullfil one of its important moral missions - protecting us, its citizens. Right now we have a health care emergency and need to be protected from the excesses of profit-based insurance plans that ration care through the decisions of their profit-serving bureaucrats.

If we only have profit-based insurance plans to choose from, we'll continue to have overhead costs in the 20-30% range - the costs of adminstrative paperwork and decision-making focused on denying care and enhancing profits. For comparison, overhead for Medicare which is publicly administered runs about 4%. And you can bet the public servants working to manage Medicare are earning a whole lot less than the billions in compensation that some private insurance executives are raking in.

One way to look at it is that profit-based insurance companies are taxing us through a chunk of the premiums we and our employers pay (premiums average close to $13,000/year for a family of 4) - if we are lucky enough to have health insurance. When 20 to 30% of premium payments go to denying care and profiting from it, that constitutes a tax on those of us who have health insurance. This private tax decreases the availability of quality health care for us who are taxed and only benefits insurance company managers and investors.

We can't "vote out of office" the insurance companies who have taxed us in this way. A truly American Plan would offer us an alternative to this private "taxation without representation." We deserve a health insurance option that serves the public interest rather than private profits.

Please let your Senators and Representatives know you want a truly American plan for health insurance reform NOW. Ask them to ignore the lobbyists who represent profit-based health insurance and listen to you.

For more information on the economic impact of the health care crisis, go to the web site of the National Coalition on Health Care: http://www.nchc.org/facts/economic.shtml