Chatham County Democratic Party

Highly interesting and useful summary of President Obama's Press Conference on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009.

The following are excerpts from a well written summary of the President's press conference taken from the July 23rd online AARP Today Bulletin. Click here to read a Word version, or click here for a pdf file. The author provides an excellent summary of the numbers underlying the crisis in medical coverage in our country today.

A letter sent to Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan and to Representative David Price by a Chatham County resident. The issue of health care is of paramount interest to President Obama. As Democrats our voices in support of the President need to be heard by our elected officials.

The myth of rugged individualism in the US needs to die and in its place we need to discover the concept of solidarity, which is to act in favor of the well being of all, particularly those who are most poor and marginalized from political influence. As public policy we must end the concept that the ill are a proper source for profit to enrich stockholders of private health insurance companies. No corporation or stockholder should profit from human suffering.

The private health insurance industry, including the non-profit sector, has evolved into a business that will only insure the healthy and will cancel that insurance, if possible, as soon as the insured becomes seriously ill. This must end.

There is NO insurance market solution for the sick. We must end risk rating of premiums based on age and health. Risk rating is fine for automobile insurance where one can control one's driving record, however it is abhorrent for human beings who cannot control their genetic composition which largely defines one's state of health. You should pick your parents carefully, if you had a choice.

The reason we have the most expensive health insurance system in this country is because we have too many insurance companies with too many policy options and too many special interests (just count the lobbyist at your door) that suck money out of the system, all of which drives our cost to 1.6 times the per capita of any other developed country, while making us 37th in the world in terms of the effectiveness of our approach to health care.

By eliminating the private health insurance system, the money saved on the administrative costs of the system would help cover the cost of insuring the 50 million left without insurance at this time.

The transition to public health insurance should be evolutionary. It should start with a public option for health insurance and require that all insurance providers, public and private, take all who apply, thus eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions and age/health base premium rates. Let the public choose among the insurance options which include a public health insurance plan.

When faced with insuring the sick, the private for-profits will discover that their companies' future profits are best served by leaving the health insurance sector and rediscovering their roots in life, fire and auto insurance products. The country will be far better off without the private health insurance sector: the cost of health care administration will drop dramatically and we will achieve universal access to health insurance.

The evidence of the failure of the for profit health insurance system is all around us. I urge you to strongly support a public health insurance option for the people of the United States. Let the people decide.

Thank you for your support of a public health insurance option.

John E. Hammond, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Lab Medicine and Biomedical Engineering
School of Medicine UNC-CH

848 Fearrington Post
Pittsboro, NC 27312

Some interesting observations on the Germany health care system, also from John Hammond. Numbers can sometimes be numbing, but the following paragraphs certainly tell a story with which voters ought to be familiar.

In Germany anyone earning less than 48,000 euros per year must participate in the public insurance system. It is funded by a employee/employer tax of 15% of income up to a maximum of 3,000 euros per month. The individual pays 7% and the employer 8%. The system covers all members of the household and includes dental as well as medical and mental health. Of the 20% of the population earning more than 48,000 euros who could opt for private insurance, fully three-quarters join the public insurance program voluntarily making a total of 95% of Germans covered by the public insurance program. The remaining 5% of the population are covered by private insurance.

The Germans organize the public system around 200 sickness funds which are insurance companies that by regulation must offer all the same basic health services, this is truly a German approach to choice without risk. The private option allows the really rich to escape so one doesn't have to listen to them grumble about the public insurance system.

All objective measures of health show Germans are far more healthy than Americans and the quality of German health care is not an issue.

For the unemployed, government picks up most of the insurance cost with a small amount taken from unemployment benefits, which, by the way, are far more generous than unemployment benefits in the US.

It is important to recognized that, as a matter of public policy, illness should never be a profit center for the shareholders of a private corporation. The common good demands that society does not leave anyone without access to healthcare, a radical Christian idea (See Matthew 25:31, otherwise known as the judgment of nations).

Further, we in the United States pay 1.6 times more per capita than any other developed country for our health insurance and our system still leaves 50 million without coverage.

Much of the excess cost we incur is from the administrative charges and the profits of our "for-profit" insurance system. If the administrative costs and private insurance companies' profits could be eliminated by a public system, the savings would go a long way in funding insurance for those 50 million left out. Look around, many of those 50 million are our neighbors, right here in Chatham County.