National Health Insurance In America Part 1

President Clinton did not and now President Bush will not address health
care reform in a way that deviates even slightly from the HMO and Managed
Care Industries that have given large sums of money to both campaigns to
keep them quiet. Thus these special interests maintain the status quo of the
for profit health insurance corporations that have taken over the health
care system in America.

Every day, approximately 100,000 people lose health insurance coverage in
the United States. Over forty-four million Americans do not have health
insurance at all. The people who have HMO's as their only choice of
insurance routinely face rejection of payment when serious health problems
arise. The doctors employed by HMO's make decisions about a person's health
without laying hands on the patient. They do not examine, listen to or have
any contact with the patient about whom life and death decisions are made
regarding their health.

This is a human rights abuse in a civil society such as ours, or any other
society, for that matter.

There are over 1500 insurance companies in America with different rules of
what services will or will not be funded. Our facility has hired two people
just to handle the health insurance questions that arise every day. They
often have a frustrated and perplexed look in their eyes as they undertake
to find solutions to problems, and then have to contact a faceless
bureaucratic entity about whether or not a service will be paid for.

Health care providers must also take the time to speak to these people, to
convince them to pay for proposed services. Letters must be written to
convince the HMO/Managed Care bureaucrats to take a second look at what
needs to be done for patients, to ensure good quality medical care.

Health care workers have accepted the unacceptable and do not seem to know
the way out of the quagmire.

I once helped to raise $3,000.00 for a seven year old patient who was in an
automobile accident, and suffered a lower spinal cord injury. He is
paralyzed from the waist down. The proposed goal for the fund raiser was to
buy a handicapped accessible van. Since these vans cost anywhere from
$15-30,000.00 dollars, the family bought a computer,
instead, enrolled the boy in a study offered online by
the Shreiner's Hospital in Philadelphia for spinal cord injured patients.

At the fund raising dinner, I sat with the patient's grandmother. She told
me she wanted the money to be put in a trust fund to pay for the child's
catheter supplies, diapers and medicine that the Managed Care Insurance
company would not pay for.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You mean you are paying for all of the supplies
out of pocket without insurance reimbursement?"

"Yes," she said.

Back in the office the following week, one of the women whose job it is to
deal with insurance questions, solved the dilemma and the supplies are now
paid for. The child's mother had receipts, and the HMO reimbursed her from
the time of the car accident.

I wondered why the insurance company did not automatically pay for these
services? If I had not helped stage an elaborate fund raising event and had
dinner with the boy's grandmother, this revelation may not have surfaced. A
Universal Single Payer health care plan would make it possible for all
people to get the services they need and free up doctors and nurses to give
the care that people deserve, plus fulfill all of the reasons doctors and
nurses entered their respective professions to begin with: to be of service,
to help other people and to bring healing to patients and their families.

Physicians for a National Health Program in America have devised the
following plan for implementation. For more information, please access
www.pnhp.org.

National Health Insurance, if implemented, would minimize any disruption to
the current health system because health care delivery mechanisms would
remain in place while only the financing mechanism changed. Single Payer
National Health Insurance would resolve virtually all of the major problems
facing America's health care system, today.

Single Payer Insurance is defined as a single government fund with each
state which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers, thus
replacing the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and
other plans.

It would provide coverage for the forty-four million people who are
uninsured.

It would eliminate the financial threat and impaired access to care for tens
of millions who do not have coverage and are unable to afford the
out-of-pocket expenses because of deficiencies in their insurance plans.

It would return to the patient free choice of health care provider and
hospitals, not the choice that only the restrictive health plans allow.

It would relieve businesses of the administrative hassle and expense of
maintaining a health benefits program.

It would remove from the health care equation the middleman-the managed care
industry-that has broken the traditional doctor-patient relationship, while
diverting outrageous amounts of patient care dollars to their own coffers.

It would control health care inflation through constructive mechanisms of
cost containment that improve allocation of our health care resources,
rather than controlling costs through an impersonal business ethic that robs
patients of care so as to increase profits for the privileged few.Single
Payer Universal Health Care would provide access to high quality care for
everyone at affordable prices.
This would be beneficial for individual business as well as the government.

So why don't we have a National Single Payer Plan?

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Kate Loving Shenk is a writer, healer, musician and the creator of the
e-book called "Transform Your Nursing Career and Discover Your Calling and
Destiny." Click here to find out how to order the e-book:
http://www.nursingcareertransformation.com
Check Out Kate's Blog: http://www.nursehealers.typepad.com
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