Fight for single-payer health care
Kay Mueller
Indiana Daily Student
Apr. 28, 2009
Soon, thousands of IU students will be graduating. Those who were carried on their parents’ health insurance will now be on their own.
Many, if not most, entry-level jobs do not offer health insurance. The stereotype is that young people don’t care about universal health insurance. Recently I heard of two new graduates who were surprised to find themselves suddenly without insurance. One of them has a pre-existing condition and is unable to get any insurance at all.
President Barack Obama has promised to reform our health care system. Unfortunately, he intends to rely on the for-profit insurance companies. These insurers add so much overhead to health care that we could never afford to cover everyone as long as the system is based on them. The U.S. now spends 16 percent of its GNP on health care and leaves more than 45 million uninsured.
All other developed countries, which do not rely on for-profit insurers, and which do cover everyone, spend less than 12 percent.
Whether or not you see yourself as needing insurance right now, your tax money will be wasted on insurance company profits and bureaucracy. A better approach is a Medicare-like “single-payer” system: You choose your own doctor and hospital, but a single payer, such as the government, pays the bills.
What can you do? You can e-mail or call Obama and say you support a single-payer system, such as Medicare for all (president@whitehouse.gov, 202-456-1111). Contact your Representative and urge him to support HR-676, which provides Medicare for all. Baron Hill is the Representative for Bloomington (baronhill.house.gov, 202-225-5315). Contact Sens. Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar, and ask them to support S-703, which also provides Medicare for all (bayh.senate.gov, 202-224-5623; lugar.senate.gov, 202-224-4814).
You can also join a demonstration at 11 a.m. May 20 on Monument Circle in Indianapolis. Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Care Plan will be demonstrating against health insurance companies immediately after the shareholders’ meeting of WellPoint (a huge national insurer with headquarters in Indianapolis).
For information, call 824-1082. If the energy put into the Obama campaign can be applied to fixing health care, anything can be accomplished.