Template op-ed
How to use this template:
- Modify by inserting your state’s figures on the uninsured and any other local information you think would be of interest (e.g. a patient story, upcoming event, battle over a hospital or emergency room closing, etc.). Feel free to take things out, move things around, rewrite, and otherwise make the op-ed fit your needs.
- Submit to the op-ed page of your local newspaper (this information is usually printed on the editorial page and on their website) under your name and include all your title and contact information.
- If your op-ed is published, please send a copy to the PNHP office (e-mail or snail mail).
- Thanks to PNHP Board Member Dr. Aaron Carroll for helping create this template.
Medicare-for-all would keep everyone covered
The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that 47 million Americans are uninsured, an increase of 2.2 million people since last year’s survey. Their annual survey is a barometer of the sad state of the health care system in America, and it shows two things. First, our health system is falling apart for people under the age of 65, and second, we can fix it by expanding an improved version of Medicare to people of all ages.
According to the Census Bureau, the number of uninsured is rising faster than at any time since 1992, and there are now more uninsured people in the United States than at any time since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s.
In [insert state], [insert number of uninsured] went a whole year without health insurance in 2006. This is one out-of-every [insert number, e.g. one out-of-every six] people in our state.
Amazingly, this deplorable situation has not been met with righteous anger or shock. It barely made a splash in the news. Yet, these numbers represent extraordinary suffering, unnecessary disability and premature deaths — at least 18,000 deaths per year nationwide, according to the Institute of Medicine.
Before we jump to conclusions about who is uninsured in America, some of the facts in the Census Bureau’s report deserve closer attention.
More than 90 percent of the newly uninsured are families with middle or high incomes. Some 1.4 million of the newly uninsured, accounting for 64 percent of the increase, are in families making more than $75,000 per year. An additional 633,000 new uninsured, 29 percent of the increase, are in families earning between $50,000 and $75,000. More than half the newly uninsured are full-time workers and their children.
Until now, in times when poverty rates fell (as they did last year), more people gained insurance. For the first time, this has changed. Health insurance is now so expensive ($12,000 and up for a basic family policy) that even middle-class families are now facing financial ruin along with illness and injury.
Do not be fooled into thinking that incremental measures are going to solve this problem. They are Band-aids on a gaping wound. In Massachusetts, often cited as a model for reform, the number of uninsured increased from 583,000 in 2005 to 657,000 in 2006. While Congress battles Bush’s opposition to a proposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the number of uninsured children actually rose by 611,000 last year to 8.7 million. Private health coverage is deteriorating rapidly, and the safety net, or what is left of it, cannot keep up.
Unfortunately, the “universal” health plans proposed by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other leading Democrats are well intentioned but won’t fix this mess. They don’t cover all the uninsured or even guarantee that people who have coverage today won’t lose it tomorrow.
There is one sure-fire way to make these numbers come down. It worked for seniors in the 1960s and still works for them today. You may hear politicians demonizing government-run health insurance, but you will hear none run on a platform of ending Medicare; nor will any turn it down for themselves when they turn 65. Call it whatever you want: National health insurance, Medicare-for-all, “single-payer” or socialized health insurance; it doesn’t matter. Research shows that Medicare-for-all (HR 676) could save enough on overhead and administrative waste ($350 billion) in our current patchwork system to cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for everyone else. A single-payer national health insurance system is the only way to drop the number of people lacking health insurance to zero.
Wouldn’t that be nice to read in next year’s Census statistics?