What is H.R. 676?
H.R. 676, also called the United States National Health Insurance Act, is a bill to create a single-payer, publicly-financed, privately-delivered universal health care program that would cover all Americans without charging co-pays or deductibles. It guarantees access to the highest quality and most affordable health care services regardless of employment, ability to pay or pre-existing health conditions.
What is "single-payer"?
The term single-payer describes the kind of financing system that H.R. 676 uses. It means that one entity--in this case, established by the government--handles all billing and payment for health care services. Right now, there are thousands upon thousands of "payers"-- HMOs, PPOs, bill collection agencies, etc. The sheer volume of paperwork required by our current system means that administrative waste accounts for roughly 31% of the money spent on health care. The single-payer system would eliminate the wasteful paperwork and administrative costs, redirecting more of our health care dollars to providing care.
Medicare is perhaps the best known single-payer system. Essentially, H.R. 676 would improve Medicare and expand it, so that it covers all Americans, regardless of their income.
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Yes, we do need U.S. House Resolution now. But don't get your hopes up one little tiny bit until we get a whole lot of education occurring and a whole lot of communications occurring. Please read on ...
Citizens need enough excellent education about non-profit single-payer national health insurance as soon as possible so that the end result is 1,000 to 3,000 citizens communicating monthly to each of the 435 U.S. Representatives. Why? Because that would help respond to the Obama Requirement, Promise and Specific Suggestion related to how to get his support on health care. When he sees that we respond to his communicated requirement, he will support us. If not, then he will not. It's not that he doesn't care about us, it's just that he #1) has spent years telling people that they need to be active participants and #2) he made it VERY clear what he requires in a meeting of citizens in April 2007 #3) he knows that there is a disease (my word) in the "beltway" (the Washington D.C. area and its surroundings) that there is not enough "political will" to pass single-payer (translation: the lobbyists are powerful and the citizens must speak up in a MASSIVE numbers communicating to their U.S. Representatives).
Keep in mind that Barack Obama knows the facts and the critical need for single-payer, because he was very vocal in 2003 about how strongly he supported single-payer at that time. In a speech in June 2003, Obama said: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world ... cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. ... Everybody In, Nobody Out. ... A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see." See the video and his requirements here.
Video and Requirement
Some citizens think it is an insult to all citizens that he does not currently support single-payer. But, again, he made it clear what his requirement is, so that is the current status of his suppport. The "bottom line" is that we individual citizens must act to get our U.S. Representatives support and our U.S. President's support. You will see in my closing remarks below what will happen if we do not.
This activity is one of the most critical things you could ever do in your life ... and something that must be done NOW. If you've known about this before and have not yet acted, then your "now" is now!!
The U.S. does NOT having what ALL other industrialized countries have: simple, cost-efficient, non-profit financing of health care.
People don't get to the doctor as much as people in other countries, so they don't get the preventive care.
What is the result? ...
1) U.S. life expectancy dropped from 27th to 30th in the world as reported in June 2008
2) U.S. ability to minimize deaths due to PREVENTABLE diseases dropped to the bottom: from 15th out of 19 countries to 19th out of 19 countries; the resulting unnecessary deaths are huge numbers of real people, people we knew and loved — as reported in January 2008.
References and more facts for the above information:
-- Current condition
-- Benefits
-- Real people (what is happened to them)
Want to get what every other industrialized country has so that we can stop paying 250% (2.5 times more!) than what they pay and get much less, such as the average citizen in more pain and suffering during our shorter lives?
-- Get reminders to act
-- Follow the schedule
So what? What happens if we do not take action? More money to health insurance companies and more money in taxes. Obama has already mentioned mandates to force families to buy health insurance for children, buying it from health insurance companies. He's also mentioned government subsidies. There's a chance that a new federal law will have the government force ALL persons to buy health insurance AND will increase taxes dramatically to help ensure that ALL Americans have health insurance. This is crazy, since mandated insurance has already failed in 6 states and is failing again dramatically in one of those (Massachusetts.). What may be the worst insult of all is that this would be true "government-run health care" when the government creates laws and regulations and some big bureaucratic staff to FORCE us to pay health insurance premiums or pay fines PLUS pay for the additional staff and for the subsidies through much higher taxes for much more inefficiency. That's scary.
We want LESS bureaucracy by having a public agency that is separate from the day-to-day meddling by the federal and state politicians.
We want Health Care for All Now!
Bob Haiducek
Bob the Health and Health Care Advocate
http://www.99oh9.org
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