Promoting the General Welfare

Medical care is a human need.

Medical care should not be a commodity to be sold for profit the same way that supermarkets sell canned tomatoes and toilet paper. But it is.

Medical care should not be a privilege acquired by family wealth and connections, nor a perquisite bestowed by corporate committees. But it is.

Insurance for medical care should not be paid for by employers who resent the expense, nor by employees who lose their medical insurance coverage when their employers go bankrupt or leave town. Employees who become ill should not lose their coverage, when they change jobs, because of "pre-existing conditions." But all this is true.

Those who need medical care should get it immediately. No one else but physicians and their patients should determine what treatments should be provided. Then physicians and medical technicians should provide it. All without obtaining permission from insurance clerks untaught in science and medicine.

We the citizens of the United States of America should receive, at the very least, the same health care that our elected officials (correctly called "the hired help" by Will Rogers) give themselves. After all, we pay to the Federal and state governments income, excise, property, sales, airline ticket, and gasoline taxes, and we the employers should control the benefits that our hired help receive.

The best way to assure all Americans the excellent medical care that they need is a government-sponsored, single-payer plan that is financed by a flat tax on all gross personal and corporate income, regardless of its source. It would be collected by the Department of Health and Human Services, through the Internal Revenue Service. The money would be deducted from paychecks, stock and bond distributions of all kinds, including those that are currently "tax free." Those reporting their income quarterly would pay when submitting their quarterly returns. This plan would increase revenue because medical expenses would no longer be deductible on income tax returns. Most important, this plan would eliminate the need for Medicare and Medicaid.

All medical expenses, approved by the patient and physician, would be paid by HHS directly to the doctors, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and medical laboratories involved in the treatment.
Would some doctors, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, medical laboratories and patients take advantage of this plan and cheat the government out of billions of dollars? Possibly. Do some of them cheat the government now? Yes. No law has ever prevented fraud, any more than a stop sign has kept speeders from racing through intersections. We do not pass legislation to keep crime from occurring. We pass laws to give victims of crime a just system of redress. We also pass them to benefit citizens that obey the law. And we pass them to fulfil the mandate of the Constitution’s Preamble: to form a more perfect Union and to promote the general welfare. A single payer system will do just that.

Unfortunately, this won’t happen, because insurance companies won’t allow it. They have more influence over lawmakers than we voters do.

Why did American insurance companies and their clients, the employers of American workers, become the gatekeepers to American health care? Because we American citizens gave them the keys to clinics and hospitals during the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. Our human need for medical care became an integral part of our employment compensation, as important as salary.

At first, medical insurance was considered something of a gift from a benevolent employer. The company would take care of you as long as you worked hard and were a productive employee.
However, employee productivity rose, but company benefits shrunk. The employee share of group medical insurance premiums increased, and in some cases the employees paid 100%.
Some companies dropped group medical insurance altogether.

Others offered a so-called "medical savings account," which allowed the employer to deduct money from the employee’s paycheck and send it to medical insurers. The money accumulated in these accounts was then used by the employee to help pay medical bills.

Help pay medical bills, but not completely pay. Most normal medical procedures, e.g. appendectomies, childbirth, cost tens of thousands of dollars, and few people could afford to save that amount of money. Employees might have thought that, after three or four years, their medical savings would grow to an amount that allows them to pay their medical bills. But most medical savings plans paid no interest, and any savings that the employee did not spend in one calendar year went to the insurer.

Insurance companies profit at the expense of human need, and we Americans have surrendered our human values to money. Why should insurance companies and their clients continue to control this human need? Because American culture values money above all else.

As do our elected officials. They cannot be re-elected without campaign contributions from the health care industry. Until our election campaign laws are changed, insurance companies will buy the votes of elected representatives. Consequently, very little will change in our municipal, state and federal governments.

To see how much your elected representatives accept from insurance companies, go to www.MAPLight.org.