Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich: Health Care Burdens

 

 

 

Did you know that half of all bankruptcies in the United States are the result of the failure of an insurance plan to do the very thing that drives each of us to buy health insurance—protect us from catastrophic financial burdens that arise from health care needs?  

Millions of Americans believe that true health care reform requires a national single payer system where more than $400 billion of administrative waste is used to provide everyone with access to all medically necessary services with no co-payments, and no deductibles, and no premiums. 

We are already paying for single payer, we just aren’t getting it.  Only by providing full health care to all can we eliminate the poverty that comes from the medical bills that the insurance companies will not pay. Unfortunately, Congress and the Obama Administration took single payer off the table before the debate began.

At the state level, Pennsylvania, New York , Illinois , Colorado and New Mexico have all taken steps toward a single payer system, because in addition to helping people stay out of poverty, it would also provide major relief for those states that are facing budget difficulties. 

The Lewin Group’s financial analysis of the California single payer bill that recently passed the legislature twice found that “the net cost of the program to state and local governments is a savings of about $900 million” in 2006 alone.

However, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has been used to thwart efforts at the state and regional levels to improve health care.  Though the law was intended to protect the integrity and quality of employee benefit plans including health care, ERISA has been used in the courts to try and stop any health care reform efforts in Maryland, San Francisco, and Suffolk County, New York. 

 This is the very reason why I introduced an amendment to the health care bill in the Committee on Education and Labor; to grant states a waiver from ERISA if they choose to offer their residents a single payer health care system.  It is entirely voluntary.  If a state wants to have better health care than can be provided by the federal government, then the federal government should not stand in their way.