Health Care For All

Teri Mills is a longtime Democracy For America community member. Her guest column on health care appears on Blog for America on Fridays and she blogs at www.nationalnurse.org.

America's resolution for the New Year should be health care for all. It's time for the United States to join every other industrialized and civilized country in the world and provide publicly financed, universal health care for its citizens and their families. Our "sick care" system is second to none. We boast some of the finest hospitals and clinics in the world. Many branches of government are connected and are dedicated to finding answers to leading killers including heart disease, cancer, strokes and diabetes.

Yet for all the good things happening in the United States with health care, there are many equally troubling facts. Newsday reports a Florida study that found children who enter a hospital without insurance are more than twice as likely to die as children with insurance. While the United States spends more than any other nation on health - $5,600 for every American - our system has the highest medically-related error rates.

The New York Times found that a third of American patients spend more than $1,000 a year out of pocket, and 68 percent of those who declared bankruptcy because of medical bills had insurance. Health Affairs, a publication from the Center for American Progress claims the United States has a lower life expectancy than 20 other countries, near epidemics of preventable conditions, and a rising infant mortality rate.

Achieving health care for all will not be easy. However, we may end up having no choice but to do just that. Eventually, health care will be so high priced that only the very rich in this country will be able to afford the luxury of seeing a doctor. When large manufacturers such as GM decide to cut thousands from their workforce, after agreeing to have their workers pay more out of pocket for their health insurance, alarm bells should start ringing inside every head in Congress. Perhaps a telephone should ring instead. A phone campaign may be just what is needed to demand legislation in 2006 to achieve health care for all.

Teri Mills, RN, MS, ANP
Democracy for Oregon

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