Health Care For All

Health care should be universal and cover everyone from the cradle to the grave. Health care is not a commodity to be bought or sold. Health care should not be the basis for profit making. Everyone needs care at one time or another; it's a question of when it is your turn or my turn.

Health insurance companies make money only when they cover healthy people who do not need care, or when they deny care to those who do need it. We do not need them to be involved in this process, taking our money and making things complicated.

We can do better if we come together to self insure as a state, as many large companies do. Vermont, in fact, would be on the smaller side of many of the companies that self insure. If we self insure we could cut all the red tape and administrative costs associated with the multiple payers in our system: 30% of our health care costs. Medicare, a government run program, operates with a 4 to 5% overhead cost, not the 30% of private insurers. And that doesn't even include the waste on the health care providers' side where they have to hire people to submit bills, wrangle with insurance companies, know the 3 to 7 digit codes to bill to get the most money back. It's all a game, and it doesn't have to be this way.

The sad part of this particular game is that people are dying. People die, and get sicker than they need to be, for longer than they need to be, because they cannot access the health care providers in their own community. It doesn't have to be this way. There is enough money in the system currently to pay for everyone to have health care.

Indeed, we know that the increase in the economy simply from people being able to leave jobs they despise but stay there anyway because they have health insurance, combined with the increase in productivity from people who don't have health care and therefore stay sicker longer who would be able to see a doctor or nurse if we covered everyone, would easily cover the cost of adding every single uninsured person to the pot of people who can access care.

Consider also all of the places that taxpayers pay for health care: their own, if they are lucky enough to have it; in their school tax (remember, 30% waste); their municipal tax (remember, 30% waste); for their governor, who in fact has had government paid for health care for most of his adult life (remember, 30% waste); for their Congress members who have government paid for, and excellent, health care (remember, 30% waste); for the president, who, in fact has access to the best (government run) hospitals in this country, Walter Reed, etc (less waste than the private sector); for Veterans; and there are probably others.

Economic arguments aside, and there are many more than I have laid out here, the fact is, all people having access to the health care they need is the right thing to do. It is as important as police or fire protection, where, in neither case, are you asked if you have insurance before the police or fire fighters respond. People are dying in this system. People we know. People we love. Our neighbors and others. And, most people want a change to the system. There is no reason to wait any longer.

I have studied this issue thoroughly and understand it from many angles. I will explore ways the City of Burlington can fight for universal health care and cover more citizens in the interim. I will look at the feasibility of a Burlington insurance pool, that is owned by the people who live here. I will use my position to lobby the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and others to push for change at the state level. I will push for universal health care until we have it.