Healthcare

By Rick Mitchell

Healthcare is a right, not a privilege. This means that whenever you are sick, you can walk into your doctor's office or any hospital and have the health care you need, for as long as you need it, with the calm assurance that all the bills will be paid.

Some facts: Approximately 50% of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical bills. Infant mortality in the U.S. is next to last in the industrialized world. Latvia is last. Life expectancy in the U.S. is among the shortest in the industrialized world.
1.4 million Pennsylvanians have no health insurance.

We pay far more per person for healthcare than any other country.

Many ways have been proposed to solve our growing healthcare problem. One of the best proposals I've seen is The Family & Business Healthcare Security Act, which consists of House Bill 1660 and Senate Bill 300. These bills are currently in the Pennsylvania legislature, awaiting additional support to ensure their passage into law.

Comprehensive healthcare coverage means providing for everything from emergency transport to hospice care. Hospitalization, prescription drugs, eye care, dental care, and chiropractic care are some examples of what comprehensive means.

How can we afford it? We do it by eliminating the wasteful spending that we currently do (involuntarily) on healthcare. Single-payer universal healthcare would replace the current system with a simple plan using existing State and Federal funds, a 3% tax on income, and a 10% business payroll tax (most employers pay substantially more than this now). An individual making $30,000 would pay $900 a year, period. This covers premiums, deductibles, co-pays, prescriptions, dental and vision. Do you pay more than that now? Providing healthcare for every Pennsylvanian does not require an increase in taxes. It requires an increase in political will.