2003-09-01 -- 72 pct Say Universal Healthcare More Important than Tax Cuts for the Rich


Thanks to Don McCanne for the following article, which shows that US
residents generate half again as much profits per person as residents
in other industrialized countries such as France or Canada, yet we
receive far worse health care and spend far more for it. The article
shows a strong majority of US residents believe the government should
supply universal health care rather than cut taxes.  Interestingly,
this report is from Al Jazeerah.


http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Edito
rials/August/31%20o/Majority%20of%20Americans%20Call%20for%20Universal
%20Health%20Care%20Sam%20Adams.htm


Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care

Sam Adams

Al Jazeerah, August 31, 2003


The United States of America is the only 1st-tier country that does
not provide a comprehensive national health care system for all of its
citizens. It is an appalling scandal that the richest country in the
world ignores the needs of nearly 45 million people who lack health
care insurance. The majority of Americans call for Universal Health
Care, according to a PEW Research Center Survey:

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=725


"Scrap Tax Cuts for Health Insurance"

"Fully 72% of Americans agree that the government should provide
universal health care, even if it means repealing most tax cuts passed
since Bush took office. Democrats overwhelmingly favor this proposal
(86%-11%) and independents largely agree (78%-19%). Even a narrow
majority of Republicans (51%) favor providing health insurance for all
even if it means canceling the tax cuts, while 44% disagree.

"In addition, most Americans especially those who support repealing
tax cuts to provide universal health coverage see this as a moral
issue as well as a political issue. Just a third believes this is
strictly a political issue, while a narrow majority (52%) views it
also as a moral question. A big majority of those who support this
proposal 61% think of it as a moral as well as a political issue,
while most opponents tend to see this in strictly political terms
(58%)."

Over 2.2 million Americans die each year, including hundreds of
thousands of deaths that are preventable with proper health care.
Refer to CDC National Center for Health Statistics, which shows that
out of a population of 280 million people, approximately 11% live
below the poverty line and 17% have no health care.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hus/02hustop.htm



This is a damning indictment of the disparity between the richest and
the many who live in misery. Under the Bush Regime, the number of
people living in poverty has increased.  (Refer to "Why isn't there a
'Pre-emptive' War on Poverty?"

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=WinstonSmith&static=2066

Compared with other 1st-tier countries who have a National Health Care
System, our citizens fair much, much worse: American's life expectancy
is on average 78 years; whereas in France and Canada it is 79.2 years,
and all other 1st-tier countries providing health care have higher
life expectancies than our own. Infant mortality rates in the USA are
6.7 per 1,000 for children under 1 year old and 8.7 per 1,000 for
children under 5 years old; whereas in France it is 4.4 per 1,000 for
children under 1 year old and 5.8 per 1,000 for children under 5 years
old, and in Canada it is 5.0 per 1,000 for children under 1 year old
and 6.7 per 1,000 for children under 5 years old. Other 1st-tier
countries follow the same trend.

The USA's GNP (gross national product) earns approximately $10.1
trillion per year with a population of 280 million, as compared with
$1.3 trillion in France with a population of 59.4 million, and $700.5
billion in Canada with a population of 31.4 million. This represents
an average per capita earnings as follows:

Country / GDP Per Capita / Life Expectancy

U.S.A. / $35,060 / 78 France / $22,010 / 79.2 Canada / $22,300 / 79.2

In other words, we generate more wealth per person than any other
country in the world, but all other 1st-tier countries provide a
national health care system, and their mortality rates are lower and
the health of their people is better. The vulnerable in France, Canada
and other 1st-tier countries with national health care, including
their infants, children and elderly live longer, and they are cared
for when they fall ill or are injured, instead of ignored if lacking
insurance as in the USA. Refer to "The World Bank Group" statistics:
http://www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/countrydata.html

You don't see and won't see the majority of citizens of France,
Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, or other
1st-tier countries with a National Health Care calling for the
privatization of their systems. They would certainly not replicate the
disastrous, callous and greed-ridden scandal that we call health care
in the U.S.A. Read "Universal Health Coverage: 'Let The Debate
Resume'", by Rashi Fein, PhD, is Professor of the Economics of
Medicine, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School:

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8634

Our own health care system is far too expensive due to exorbitant
costs of health insurance and care, of which a large percentage
represents over-heads. Similar to the greed of Enron, WorldCom,
Halliburton, Bechtel, Big Oil, Eli Lily, etc., the CEOs and executives
of HMOs and Insurance Corporations "take-the-money-and-run" greedily
accumulating massive salaries far in excess of any right and proper
compensation package.

The Bush Regime has worsened the situation, and is callous to the
needs of our citizens-- indeed, they hypocritically brag about
bringing back health care to Iraqi citizens (Iraq had National Health
Care under Saddam Hussein), and yet the corrupt Bushies ignore the
needs of millions of people, across the fruited plains in the USA.
Moreover, the corrupt Bush Gang has awarded massive tax cuts to
corporations and the wealthiest richest-of-the-rich, & recklessly spent
t a king's ransom on an illegal & immoral war in Iraq, instead of
seeking to improve the lives of our countrymen and solving the
horrific health care scandal here at home.

Americans are and should be outraged that our country is the richest
in the world-- and yet our citizens are treated like those in 3rd
world countries instead of 1st-tier countries.

We should reassess our priorities and demand that less be spent on
Bush's Corporate Cronies, the Pentagon and the insane squandering of
big bucks on the Defense Industry (over $450 billion per year), and
more to improve the health and lives of "We the People".

Please read "U.S. Wastes Health-care Funds: Administrative Costs
Double Canada's Rate - Better System Could Aid Millions Researchers
Say", by Gene Emery:

"BOSTON-Thirty-one cents of every dollar spent on health care in the
United States goes to pay administrative costs - nearly double the
rate in Canada, according to a new comparison that sees colossal
bureaucratic waste in the American system.

Americans spend $752 more per person per year than Canadians on
medical administrative costs alone, according to the study by
investigators from Harvard University and the Canadian Institute for
Health Information, which was published in this week's New England
Journal of Medicine.

Researchers who prepared the comparison said yesterday that the United
States wastes more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to
provide health care to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

The team, led by Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard, said a large sum of
money might be saved in the United States if administrative costs
could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style, single-payer health
care system.

"The difference in the costs of health-care administration between the
United States and Canada is clearly large and growing," the
researchers said, questioning whether the $294.3 billion spent each
year on U.S. health care administration is money well spent.

Woolhandler, and co-author David Himmelstein, also of Harvard and a
founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, added that if the
United States adopted a Canadian-style system the savings would likely
pay for coverage for the more than 41 million Americans without health
insurance.

The study found overhead costs for U.S. insurance companies - mostly
for underwriting and advertising - ate up 11.7 cents of every health
care dollar, compared with 1.3 cents for Canada's government-run
system and 3.6 cents for the U.S. Medicare system for the elderly.

Among Canada's private insurance companies, the overhead costs were
even higher: 13.2 cents per dollar.

The study also found that after certain exclusions, administration
accounted for 31 per cent of health-care expenditures in the United
States and 16.7 per cent in Canada. The estimates do not include the
advertising costs of drug companies or hospitals, health care industry
profits, or the value of patients' time spent on paperwork.

But in an editorial in the Journal, Henry Aaron of the Brookings
Institution in Washington, said the administrative costs in the United
States might be 24 per cent lower than the Woolhandler estimate.

He said the excess spending on health care administration in 1999 was
probably closer to $159 billion, not $209 billion cited in the study.

Aaron said it also doesn't prove the United States would save a lot of
money if it converted to the Canadian system."

This piece is available from

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0821-04.htm