Labor & Health Care
Where U.S.health care ranks in the world:
In spending—#1
In effectiveness of delivery—#37 (according to World Health Organization)
In Canada, Japan, and most of Europe, health care is guaranteed to all, mainly financed through taxes on employers and workers.
In the United States more than forty million have no health care coverage—mainly self-employed and low wage workers. Most that do have health insurance get it through their employer, paid for partially as part of their compensation in lieu of wages, partially through direct payroll deductions, co-pays, and deductibles. Lose your job and you lose your health care.
Some recent schemes claiming to be "universal coverage" would require everyone to get health coverage through insurance companies and would funnel tax-payer subsidies into the coffers of corporate giants rather than spending money on actual health services. These plans, supported by employers such as Wal-Mart, and some misguided unions such as SEIU, would also relieve bosses of any obligation to provide health care coverage. These scams would be a step backwards.
Health care policy decisions are made by insurance companies, HMOs and drug corporations not on the basis of sound medical practice but on bottom line profitability.
Corporate health care not only have tremendous wealth; they use part of this wealth politically to block the kind of health care system we need. Neither of the major parties is willing at this point to go beyond a few cosmetic reforms. To get the health care we deserve will require a broad-based, grass-roots political movement.
The Labor Party, in collaboration with organizations such as Physicians for a National Health Program, and the California Nurses Association, have come up with a plan called Just Health Care.
Just Health Care would guarantee quality health care to every resident of the United States. There would be no co-pays or deductibles, no restrictions on pre-existing conditions. There would be absolute freedom to choose your own doctor. There would be complete coverage for mental treatments, dental services, optical services, and prescription drugs.
Working with economists, the Labor Party has also prepared a financing plan to pay for all this coverage—and support a transition program to train and place those displaced by the elimination of private insurance and HMOs. Based on a progressive tax structure this plan would mean 95 percent of working people would pay less than they pay for health care today.
Representative John Conyers, D-Mich, has introduced a bill in congress along the lines of Just Health Care:
The California Nurses Association is leading the fight for single-payer both on the state level and support for national legislation through web sites such as this one:
And actions such as this one at the capitol in Sacramento:
