We Can Do It

 What You See Is What You Get

Health Care for All.
We can do it, really we can. Universal health care is achievable. If is working well and successfully in numerous other countries. We can learn from their example, avoid the mistakes they have learned from and provide a well appreciated and critical service to our citizens. Wellness and preventative health care and screening will save medical problems from becoming chronic in most cases.

How you ask?  We already have a great working example in Medicare. As a senior on Medicare with a supplemental insurance policy, my health care has been wonderful and I have numerous conditions that need regular follow-up and monitoring. All I had to do was live until my 65th birthday and paid into Medicare/Medicaid through my payroll deductions. NOTE: If I had passed away before the age of 65 all the money I paid is simply absorbed into the Trust Fund.
Incidentally, I am still making a monthly payment for my Medicare coverage - $1560 a year for me double the amount for both Anne and myself.

Suppose we had all workers pay for their healthcare by a payroll deduction into a Trust Fund. The deduction would fund medical coverage for all and the deduction could be scaled to the income level of the worker. Perhaps, employers could be tapped to make a proportional donation? The point is it could be done and the benefit for all Americans would be immeasurable. If everyone is using the same insurance how much cost savings would result from reduced administrative cost, single negotiations for fees and medications prices?

What about those who do not want health insurance coverage? Same question asked and answered for SS and Medicare/Medicaid deductions. The young healthy among us would benefit from routine physicals and health care screenings. The less those among who use it the more left in the fund, but the goal is a healthier American populous, especially for children and expectant and new mothers and the older citizens among us. That is a good thing, a very good thing a progressive nation should work to achieve.

Finally thought. What we hear from our seemingly negative national and state level legislators is almost all about the things we can not do. The conservatives among them are putting the stops on affordable and available health care for Americans. (NOTE: the House exempted themselves from the AHCA bill they past.) These same conservative legislators are working denying women health care (mammograms and pap smears, contraception alternatives, etc.) and family planning options including abortion. The goal of representative government should be on allowing people of the republic to make their own choices, not reduce those choices and options based on a religious based ideology deemed superior to other moral or spiritual beliefs.

America has allowed slavery, bigotry, racism, sexual orientation discrimination, religious bias, even crimes against humanity ( e.g.Indian Removal and Atom Bomb) in our past. We have acknowledged and corrected many of these past injustices and made many inhumane and egregious discriminatory practices illegal. Yet, there continue to be serious and determined efforts by conservatives to go back to the way things were before: make abortion illegal, discriminate and criminalize LBGT, overthrow regulation of water, air, and food safety, diminish science and research investments, etc. all, ALL, for the sake of making rich people and industries richer and more empowered. None of their deregulation actions are motivated by anything but the determination to free up business, finance, and banks, industries to make more money and not pay the price to keep water clean, air clean, financial transactions transparent and in the interest of users and investors.

I truly believe we Americans deserve a better outlook and goal. If fairness and justice played a stronger and larger role, the partisanism can be tamed if the voice of the concerned voters are heard and we all, young and old, engage in the process of selecting and electing better women and men. I know it can be done and I know it is right that we make the effort.