Oregon's Democratic senator is proposing universal health insurance for all Americans, guaranteeing each of us coverage as good as what Members of Congress get (a framing that will surely make it harder, though obviously not impossible, for those in thrall of the K Street lobbyists to stand against it).
The proposal will end the historical-oddity of employer-based insurance, which means that in a sane world the big corporations would immediately get on board with this--starting with Wal-Mart.
Sirota has background, including the role of SEIU prez (and p3 fave) Andy Stern on the issue.
Way to go, Senator Wyden.
4 comments:
The expected typical socialism push for big government healthcare.
However, if you want to pay for my health coverage yourself, I will let you!
Just don't demand I pay for yours!
why not? You live here, you benefit from your citizenship--pay your share.
That said, I don't think much of this plan--forcing employees to do all the heavy lifting for what amounts to employer-paid healthcare (until they turn off the money spigot in 2 years, apparently) doesn't make any sense. Neither does pooling at the individual level, IMO. We could make employer-based healthcare work if the providers were simply more uniform.
Heads up, Justadog: If you have insurance and the next guy doesn't, you're already paying for his health care.
He probably uses the ER as his primary health care provider, which means he gets no preventive care and only gets care after conditions have gotten worse, meaning treatment also costs more. And, in the end, at least part of the cost works its way back through the system to you as higher premiums.
We've already got "socialized medicine"--it's just handled in a really clunky way.
The status quo is not only unfair, it's also ridiculously inefficient--something that enemies of socialism were supposed to be against.
bn
Thanks for the post, Nothstine. I'm helping Senator Wyden with his netroots site on this - Stand Tall for America.
Obviously, there are going to be a lot of questions. Anything this big is going to be pretty complex.
I'd encourage everyone to actually head on over to the site and read about the plan. There's definitely a lot of misunderstanding already appearing on the net... not to mention the usual suspects on the right bad-mouthing everything in sight.
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