The way that health care services are delivered in this
country needs to be reformed. Our great
national debate currently underway should be focused on how best to do it, and
understandably there is a great deal of passion from all perspectives because
health care is so deeply personal to individuals. People can and do die when not treated
properly. However, we need to debate
this vital issue rationally and civilly.
We have
reached a crisis in this country because of the economic impact of health
care. Approximately 17% of our Gross
Domestic Product is spent on health care, or about $2.5 trillion each
year. When that much money is spent on
anything, you can be sure that there are powerful organizations committed to ensuring
that nothing changes. Those
organizations are working overtime to convince people that health care reform
is too risky, too dangerous to be undertaken.
But if we
do nothing, we can expect health care costs to double over the next ten years,
just as they have over the last ten years.
Bernadette of Mountaintop called in to my telephone town meeting earlier
this week to tell me her story. She
works for a small company with just 16 employees. The owner has worked hard to be responsible
by providing health insurance to his employees, even though premiums have
increased 27 to 33% every year for the last several years. To keep costs manageable, their insurance now
requires greater co-pays and deductibles from employees. Bernadette had the misfortune of getting sick
last year, and her son broke his ankle.
Those two illnesses put her $10,000 in debt with co-pays and
deductibles.
There are
many Bernadettes in this country with similar stories, and it is for people
like her and her employer that we need to find a better way. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first
president to propose creating a national health care system. If it were easy, we would have done it
decades ago. It is not easy, as I think everyone
is coming to realize while watching the contentious debates now taking place in
Congress and in public forums around the country. Should the government create its own
insurance plan to compete with private insurers? Should we mandate that all individuals have
health insurance? Should we require
employers over a certain size to offer health insurance to their
employees? And above all, how should we
pay for health care?
The United States
has some of the finest health care professionals and institutions in the
world. Wealthy foreigners flock to our
hospitals to get state-of-the-art treatments.
We need to take care to keep that level of excellence. But we need to ensure that non-wealthy people
also have access to medical care that can save lives and improve the quality of
life. Although we spend about twice as
much per capita on health care as any other industrialized nation in the world,
we rank near the bottom of the list when comparing health outcomes using
objective criteria such as infant mortality rates.
President
Obama deserves enormous credit for taking on this challenge. He recognizes that the status quo is not
sustainable and has encouraged Congress to reach a consensus on reforming the
system. Members of Congress like myself
are now reaching out to the people we represent so that we can understand what
is most important to you in the health care system. On my web site I have posted a variety of
resources to help you understand the issues under debate. Take the time to check them out at http://Kanjorski.house.gov. Send me an email at
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. Send me a letter at The Stegmaier Building, 7
N. Wilkes-Barre Blvd., Suite 400M,
Wilkes-Barre PA 18702,
or call my office at (570) 825-2200. We
have a lot of big decisions to make in the coming months, and I need to hear
from you.
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