WAKE UP NEW MEXICO! The government is about to sell us out to the insurance companies! This is not a joke or an exaggeration. Our time to speak out is NOW.
Many of you know me as a number cruncher, the researcher with a lot of facts and data. I will be sharing some with you tomorrow, but because we are at an urgent crossroads I am speaking now as your neighbor and friend.
Like you, I am sick and tired of watching our family and friends sobbing in anguish when they can’t pay a hospital or doctor bill - or delay getting even life saving care when they need it.
Expanding insurance will NEVER equal universal access to care. Its administrative costs alone waste ONE BILLION DOLLARS A DAY; money that could provide a lot of health care, instead, thrown down the drain on paperwork. The insurance corporations are salivating at the thought of the government handing them additional profits on the 45 million people currently without insurance.
This is a white-collar crime in plain sight. If we the people are passive, the President and a cowardly Congress will try to make us believe – again – that more insurance, more technology and more band-aids will fix a broken system.
I want my tax dollars used to pay for health care including public health and prevention, not a hidden corporate bailout. Insurance CEOs make bonuses based on how good they are at rationing care to sick people; most earn millions and some have earned hundreds of millions of dollars a year by having their companies refuse to pay for health care.
Here in New Mexico the so-called economic “downturn” is a crisis. What good is an insurance card with complicated rules and high fees when you are out of work and short on cash? Here is a fact so unbelievable that you might think I am making it up – but the President and Congress are seriously considering a mandate forcing everyone to buy insurance or be fined ever-increasing penalties. What do they not understand about how broke we are?!
The best way to assure universal access to health care is through expanding Medicare. Medicare is not perfect and it will need funding at a level to restore recent cutbacks and undo privatization. However, opening Medicare is the most fiscally conservative and least-disruptive way to cover everyone; simple changes to an existing, very popular program. Medicare already funds the private delivery system, so everyone keeps their same providers if they want and the government pays the bills.
The wonderful diversity that New Mexico is known for, also leads to diverse and special needs in providing health care to everyone. None of the national bills address our reality, here on the ground, in the New Mexico health care system.
Wake up New Mexico. We only have a few weeks to be raucous enough that our Congressional delegates get it. They must hear us loud. We don’t want excuses, we don’t want to hear about not having enough votes. This is their time to show courage and leadership and represent New Mexico, not support a complicated national bill that will need endless tinkering. The only way for them to prove that our health is more important than bailing out the sickness insurance industry is for them to fight and vote for universal health care. The two bills that must be passed are House Bill 676 and Senate Bill 703.
It is time for one system with one set of rules for all of us; everybody in, nobody out.
1 comments:
I am in the midst of putting together and 4 page newsletter as a class project for my indesign class (UNM CE multimedia program)
If you send my some information I will post your Oped and other articles about universal and single payer ( What the difference?) and Obama's plan.
I also wrote Obama staff at the Whitehouse outlining why his plan doesn't work for me on Medicare and Presbyterian Senior care plan as a disabled adult.
When I am through you can distribute it if you like.
Let me know if this is something you are interested in.
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