Register for the Healthcare-NOW! Annual Strategy Conference
Healthcare-NOW! National Strategy Conference
January 28th and 29th, 2012
Houston, TX
We need your help planning the strategy for the year ahead. Join single-payer activists and supporters from across the country in Houston, TX so we can build on the successes of the year past and develop concrete plans for the year ahead.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was not a step forward and even that is being dismantled piece-by-piece. We can almost be certain that Medicaid and Medicare will be gouged. The new number of deaths due to lack of access to healthcare is near 100,000 a year. Now more than ever, it is urgent for us to continue organizing for improved Medicare-for-all.
Come to the National Strategy Conference to share your ideas and opinions, brainstorm with friends you haven’t met yet, hear inspiring speakers, and participate in engaging, informative workshops.
When: Saturday, January 28 and Sunday, January 29, 2012
Where: Hilton Houston Hobby Airport, Houston, TX
Time: Sat, 4pm – 9pm, with pre-conference southern hospitality meet & greet 2pm-4pm
Sun, 9am – 5pm
Fee: $40 for members (anyone who has donated in 2011 and/or attended the 2010 Conference in Philadelphia) and $60 for non-members.
Please go here for more information and to register before January 21.
There are two airports in Houston, TX. Please be sure to book your flight to the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston.
Hello out there,
I’m thinking….
If we want to get IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance for ALL off the ground somewhat of a compromise may be necessary.
It goes like this and it is largely voluntary.
1. Open up IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance for ALL to all who wish to sign up. Using the current Medicare Insurance template to eliminate reinventing the wheel
2. Use HR 676 as the model to demonstrate the coverage desired.
Medical insurance cannot get any better than this:
IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance for ALL would cover every person for all necessary medical care 24/7 to include:
* Wellness
* prescription drugs
* hospital
* surgical
* outpatient services
* primary and preventive care
* emergency services
* dental
* mental health
* home health
* physical therapy
* rehabilitation (including for substance abuse)
* vision care
* hearing services including hearing aids
* chiropractic
* durable
* medical equipment
* palliative care
* long term care
No deductibles No Co-pays
3. This is excellent use of tax dollars for this is one way to bring OUR tax dollars back home to OUR communities = new economic growth and new jobs throughout the nation.
4. This also is a tool that would reduce the cost of all governments which means we should push for a mandate that brings all governments under the IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance for ALL umbrella to include all public school districts. Now we’re thinking like true Fiscal Conservatives demonstrating Fiscally and Socially Responsible actions.
5. WE take eliminating the conventional medical insurance industry off the table to allow those who claim they cannot live without this
reckless group to allow continued access. Those who want it should have it. This is our compromise!
Keep these thoughts in mind:
Improved Medicare Single Payer Insurance for All is one substantial part of the solution.
– Easy to Implement: Medicare has been in existence since 1966, it provides healthcare to those 65 and older, and satisfaction levels are high. The structure is already in place and can be easily expanded to cover everyone.
– Simple: One entity – established by the government – would handle billingand payment at a cost significantly lower than private insurance companies.
Private insurance companies spend about 31% of every healthcare dollar on
administration. Medicare now spends about 3%.
– Real Choice: An expanded and improved Medicare for All would provide personal choice of doctors and other healthcare providers. While financing would be public, providers would remain private. As with Medicare, you choose your doctor, your hospital, and other healthcare providers.
– State and Local Tax Relief: Medicare for All would assume the costs of healthcare delivery, thus relieving the states and local governments of the cost of healthcare, including Medicaid, and as a result reduce State and local tax burdens.
– Expanded coverage: Would cover all medically necessary healthcare
services – no more rationing by private insurance companies. There would be no limits on coverage, no co-pays or deductibles, and services would include not only primary and specialized care but also prescription drugs, dental,vision, mental health services, and long-term care.
– Everyone In, Nobody Out: Everyone would be eligible and covered. No longer would doctors ask what insurance you have before they treat you.
– No More Overpriced Private Health Insurance: Give people a choice. Medicare for All would eliminate the need for private health insurance companies who put profit before healthcare, unfairly limit choice, restrict who gets coverage, and force people into bankruptcy.
For those who insist on this reckless type of insurance say go for it just don’t expect me to meet you there.
– Lower Costs: Most people will pay significantly less for healthcare. Savings will be achieved in reduced administrative costs and in negotiated prices for prescription drugs.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/
I do not see any need to address phasing out the medical insurance industry. This should not be any part of our mission. Let that be a matter of choice.
What also should be a matter of choice however is IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance. Allow we IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance consumers the right to bring OUR tax dollars home to our respective communities.
There are close to 70 million uninsured as we speak. Open up IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer insurance and bring them on. Their tax dollars alone would support a Medicare single payer system. Plus senior citizens would participate. Now there are plenty of tax dollars to support Improved Medicare Single Payer Insurance.
The 70 million or more uninsured are not with any medical insurance company and the industry is raking in profits. The industry does not want the uninsured or the senior citizen population. This is where Improved Medicare Single Payer Insurance steps up to the plate.
Moreover, tax dollars pay for critical elements of the health care system apart from direct care. Medicare Insurance funds much of the expensive equipment hospitals use along with all medical residencies.
Open the IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance door wide to all who want to switch. In america trillions of tax dollars are collected annually. So everybody in the USA is paying taxes somehow let’s not play pretend.
Millions upon millions upon million have been put out of work due to home loan fraudulent activity under Reagan/Bush and Bush/Cheney. Millions more due to outsourcing employment abroad. These incidents have no doubt brought on huge interest in medicare insurance.
Today January 2,2012 the Kansas City paper reads “Medicare faces change one way or the other.”
There are no solutions coming from capitol hill. Nothing new.
We know there at least 70 million uninsured some of which are employed. Then there are likely millions more working under insured who might about as well off paying out of pocket considering that under insurance will not see them through any serious condition such as cancer. Then we have a few million senior citizens in this pie as well.
As I have been suggesting all of the above are taxpayers please keep this in mind. Health Care should be a right not just another retail item in our lives. Humans are born needing health care not by choice. Therefore Health Care should be a right
Medicare faces change one way or the other. Well this is what HealthCare NOW has bee trying to accomplish over the past few years.
There are millions upon millions of potential clients for Medicare anyway we look at it. IF 100 million clients signed on to IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance at $100 a month for Singles and $200 per month for a family of 4-5 this would bring in mammoth amounts of dollars to the Medicare Insurance Fund.
Then we back up the insurance system with a .25 cent nationwide sales tax… I say we’re on to something. At least these tax dollars would be applied to something useful.
Small business might just love this concept as would many unions. Yes even those corporations who pay no taxes will of course jump on the band wagon. The icing on the cake will be jobs for America.
The U.S. health insurance system is typically characterized as a largely private-sector system, so it may come as a surprise that more than 60% of the $2 trillion annual U.S. health care bill is paid through taxes, according to a 2002 analysis published in Health Affairs by Harvard Medical School associate professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein.
Tax dollars pay for Medicare and Medicaid, for the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service. Tax dollars pay for health coverage for federal, state, and municipal government employees and their families, as well as for many employees of private companies working on government contracts.
Moreover, tax dollars also pay for critical elements of the health care system apart from direct care—Medicare funds much of the expensive equipment hospitals use, for instance, along with all medical residencies.
All told, then, tax dollars already pay for at least $1.2 trillion in annual U.S. health care expenses. Since federal, state, and local governments collected approximately $3.5 trillion in taxes of all kinds—income, sales, property, corporate—in 2006, that means that more than one third of the aggregate tax revenues collected in the United States that year went to pay for health care.
Recognizing these hidden costs that U.S. households pay for health care today makes it far easier to see how a universal single-payer system—with all of its obvious advantages—can cost most Americans less than the one we have today.
Medicare must exist in the fragmented world that is American health care—but no matter how creative the opponents of single-payer get, there is no way they can show convincingly how the administrative costs of a single-payer system could come close to the current level.
More on this matter:
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2008/0508harrison.html
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Let’s review some numbers:
The U.S. health insurance system is typically characterized as a largely private-sector system, so it may come as a surprise that more than 60% of the $2 trillion annual U.S. health care bill is paid through taxes.
All told, then, tax dollars already pay for at least $1.2 trillion in annual U.S. health care expenses.
Since federal, state, and local governments collected approximately $3.5 trillion in taxes of all kinds—income, sales, property, corporate—in 2006, that means that more than one third of the aggregate tax revenues collected in the United States that year went to pay for health care.
Forgive me folks but it seems $1.2 trillion should cover all in the nation under an IMPROVED Medicare Single Payer Insurance plan. Which would more than enough to cover just those consumers who want to sign on voluntarily.
Health Care NOW has the most fiscally prudent offer on the table!