Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care Sam Adams

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care

Sam Adams

8/31/03

The United States of America is the only 1st-tier country that does not provide a comprehensive national health care system for all of its citizens. It is an appalling scandal that the richest country in the world ignores the needs of nearly 45 million people who lack health care insurance. The majority of Americans call for Universal Health Care, according to a PEW Research Center Survey on http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=725 . They cite the following results:

"Scrap Tax Cuts for Health Insurance"

"Fully 72% of Americans agree that the government should provide universal health care, even if it means repealing most tax cuts passed since Bush took office. Democrats overwhelmingly favor this proposal (86%-11%) and independents largely agree (78%-19%). Even a narrow majority of Republicans (51%) favor providing health insurance for all even if it means canceling the tax cuts, while 44% disagree.

"In addition, most Americans especially those who support repealing tax cuts to provide universal health coverage see this as a moral issue as well as a political issue. Just a third believes this is strictly a political issue, while a narrow majority (52%) views it also as a moral question. A big majority of those who support this proposal 61% think of it as a moral as well as a political issue, while most opponents tend to see this in strictly political terms (58%)."

Over 2.2 million Americans die each year, including hundreds of thousands of deaths that are preventable with proper health care. Refer to CDC National Center for Health Statistics on http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hus/02hustop.htm , which shows that out of a population of 280 million people, approximately 11% live below the poverty line and 17% have no health care. This is a damning indictment of the disparity between the richest and the many who live in misery. Under the Bush Regime, the number of people living in poverty has increased (refer to "Why isn't there a 'Pre-emptive' War on Poverty?" on http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=WinstonSmith&static=2066 ).

Compared with other 1st-tier countries who have a National Health Care System, our citizens fair much, much worse: American's life expectancy is on average 78 years; whereas in France and Canada it is 79.2 years, and all other 1st-tier countries providing health care have higher life expectancies than our own. Infant mortality rates in the USA are 6.7 per 1,000 for children under 1 year old and 8.7 per 1,000 for children under 5 years old; whereas in France it is 4.4 per 1,000 for children under 1 year old and 5.8 per 1,000 for children under 5 years old, and in Canada it is 5.0 per 1,000 for children under 1 year old and 6.7 per 1,000 for children under 5 years old. Other 1st-tier countries follow the same trend.

The USA's GNP (gross national product) earns approximately $10.1 trillion per year with a population of 280 million, as compared with $1.3 trillion in France with a population of 59.4 million, and $700.5 billion in Canada with a population of 31.4 million. This represents an average per capita earnings as follows:

Country / GDP Per Capita / Life Expectancy

U.S.A. / $35,060 / 78 France / $22,010 / 79.2 Canada / $22,300 / 79.2

In other words, we generate more wealth per person than any other country in the world, but all other 1st-tier countries provide a national health care system, and their mortality rates are lower and the health of their people is better. The vulnerable in France, Canada and other 1st-tier countries with national health care, including their infants, children and elderly live longer, and they are cared for when they fall ill or are injured, instead of ignored if lacking insurance as in the USA. (Refer to "The World Bank Group" statistics on http://www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/countrydata.html )

You don't see and won't see the majority of citizens of France, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, or other 1st-tier countries with a National Health Care calling for the privatization of their systems. They would certainly not replicate the disastrous, callous and greed-ridden scandal that we call health care in the U.S.A. Read "Universal Health Coverage: 'Let The Debate Resume'", by Rashi Fein, PhD, is Professor of the Economics of Medicine, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School on http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8634 .

Our own health care system is far too expensive due to exorbitant costs of health insurance and care, of which a large percentage represents over-heads. Similar to the greed of Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, Bechtel, Big Oil, Eli Lily, etc., the CEOs and executives of HMOs and Insurance Corporations "take-the-money-and-run" greedily accumulating massive salaries far in excess of any right and proper compensation package.

The Bush Regime has worsened the situation, and is callous to the needs of our citizens-- indeed, they hypocritically brag about bringing back health care to Iraqi citizens (Iraq had National Health Care under Saddam Hussein), and yet the corrupt Bushies ignore the needs of millions of people, across the fruited plains in the USA. Moreover, the corrupt Bush Gang has awarded massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest richest-of-the-rich, & recklessly spent a king's ransom on an illegal & immoral war in Iraq, instead of seeking to improve the lives of our countrymen and solving the horrific health care scandal here at home.

Americans are and should be outraged that our country is the richest in the world-- and yet our citizens are treated like those in 3rd world countries instead of 1st-tier countries.

We should reassess our priorities and demand that less be spent on Bush's Corporate Cronies, the Pentagon and the insane squandering of big bucks on the Defense Industry (over $450 billion per year), and more to improve the health and lives of "We the People".

Please read "U.S. Wastes Health-care Funds: Administrative Costs Double Canada's Rate - Better System Could Aid Millions Researchers Say", by Gene Emery, on http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0821-04.htm .

"BOSTON—Thirty-one cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States goes to pay administrative costs — nearly double the rate in Canada, according to a new comparison that sees colossal bureaucratic waste in the American system.

Americans spend $752 more per person per year than Canadians on medical administrative costs alone, according to the study by investigators from Harvard University and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which was published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers who prepared the comparison said yesterday that the United States wastes more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

The team, led by Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard, said a large sum of money might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system.

"The difference in the costs of health-care administration between the United States and Canada is clearly large and growing," the researchers said, questioning whether the $294.3 billion spent each year on U.S. health care administration is money well spent.

Woolhandler, and co-author David Himmelstein, also of Harvard and a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, added that if the United States adopted a Canadian-style system the savings would likely pay for coverage for the more than 41 million Americans without health insurance.

The study found overhead costs for U.S. insurance companies — mostly for underwriting and advertising — ate up 11.7 cents of every health care dollar, compared with 1.3 cents for Canada's government-run system and 3.6 cents for the U.S. Medicare system for the elderly.

Among Canada's private insurance companies, the overhead costs were even higher: 13.2 cents per dollar.

The study also found that after certain exclusions, administration accounted for 31 per cent of health-care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 per cent in Canada. The estimates do not include the advertising costs of drug companies or hospitals, health care industry profits, or the value of patients' time spent on paperwork.

But in an editorial in the Journal, Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the administrative costs in the United States might be 24 per cent lower than the Woolhandler estimate.

He said the excess spending on health care administration in 1999 was probably closer to $159 billion, not $209 billion cited in the study.

Aaron said it also doesn't prove the United States would save a lot of money if it converted to the Canadian system."

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).