Frequently Asked Questions
It is highly recommended you read the book Health Security America: Fixing the health care crisis prior to consulting the frequently asked questions outlined.
1. Why not a government funded universal, single payer health care plan for all?
2. I already have good insurance. Why should I make the switch?
3. I am unemployed—will I be able to afford the premium?
5. How do I join the coalition for a Health-Secure America? How can I help?
7. What exactly does Congress have to do to get the Health Security America plan functional?
8. I agree with everything you have said—but how will you ever get it implemented?
9. Will my employer pay my premium?
10. Will insurance actuaries help determine allowable treatments and medicines?
11. My current health insurance pays for a private room if I am in the hospital. Will HSA cover it, too?
14. What happens if I don’t take the HSA insurance and I get sick?
15. What about dental and long term care insurance?
1. Why not a government funded universal, single payer health care plan for all?
- The government
has had over 30 years to propose such a plan, implement it, and make
it function. but because of all the lobbying forces in the medical area,
including insurance companies, device manufacturers, professional medical
organizations and drug companies, nothing has happened.
30 years is a long time to keep health care from all people. This single
failure to implement a universal-single payer health plan, alone, indicates
the influence of special interests in government over the average citizen,
leaving only social justice as a weapon to change the system.
Our government employees, hardworking and dedicated to their jobs, are not always able to dictate how rules and decisions are made, again, due to the special interest groups. Health Security America isolates the special interests through its citizen governance process. It puts ordinary, interested citizens in the driver's seat. Health Security America isolates special interests with elected regional representatives in publicly financed election campaigns. It isolates special interests by preventing anyone from its board of information and regional representatives working for any special interest group for a period of three years after leaving office. Finally, it isolates special interests by offering a referendum in 7 years—a direct vote of the people on the effectiveness of the governing process in place. No, 295 million people will not all vote, but enough will take the time to make this plan work as it should. Finally, any one regional representative can bring to the process a decision he wants made and it will be voted on by the regional representatives for a final decision through the standard governing procedure. - Would you be willing to trust the government bureaucracy to reform the health care system, now, after the recent drug addition to Medicare ("Medicare Part D"), with its “no shopping for the best price clause”—delightful welfare for drug companies? Or would you be willing to trust citizens who have been clamoring for health care reform and are willing to pay for it themselves, and govern it themselves with big doses of common sense, such as competitive shopping for drugs? The book Health Security America: Fixing the health care crisis has made it clear there will be significant, carefully outlined new responsibilities given to physicians, patients and hospitals to make the Health Security America plan work. These responsibilities are not presented in other universal health, single payer health plans, but must be there to realize the cost savings necessary to make the health plan affordable. If not, we will simply have more of the same, only hidden in taxes we can not pay. I think it appropriate to discuss again.
- The physician
in the Health Security America plan will have a revenue stream reduced
by 28% with which to run his practice. Health Security America considers
this carefully by having as one of its crucial, unbreakable rules the
abandonment of all non-compete clauses in provider contracts. This is
crucial because now the physician can return to running/administering
his own practice. Typically, under the current system, a provider's
administrative work is done by huge clinics or managed health plans,
which have been shown to cost 34.7% of total revenue in a present-day
two-physician practice.
There is no real reason for the middlemen to siphon 35% of health care dollar for themselves. The technical capabilities of running one's own practice have long since been available to all health providers. The physicians in the Health Security America plan will now be able to present up to $142 billion in annual savings for our country’s health care system. - The hospital will no longer senselessly compete with the hospital down the block under Health Security America. This is spelled out in the book's chapter on hospitals. Axing the massive TV ad campaigns, color brochures mailed bi-monthly, waterfalls in the atrium, valet service and other hospital amenities will all add up to 15% savings almost immediately. Health Security America spells out how all this will occur. Evaluation, standardization and optimal distribution of hospital services will reverse the counterproductive, resource-squandering situation often found today. Duplication of services and charges varying as much as 112% will cease. Regional health organizations run by citizens will determine in many instances what hospital does what so there only are complementary services between hospitals, not competitive ones.
- Under Health Security America, patients have very carefully spelled out specific duties in governance and in modification of actual health care. I have not seen these things spelled out in other universal-single payer plans. I am going to refer to the book Health Security America’s three chapters on governance and chapter 11 dealing with potential health care modification determinations by the citizens.
In summary, it is not enough to simply demand a universal, single payer health plan and put the burden on Congress to give it to us. It won’t happen. There are eight specific crucial rules presented in Health Security America: Fixing the health care crisis and if these are not violated, and if the book is followed, we will have a universal, single payer health plan that works and above all we can afford.
2. I already have good insurance. Why should I make the switch?
There is no one saying that you couldn’t keep your same insurance if it is offered to you. Health Security America (HSA) is voluntary. Since is is reasonable to expect up to a 50% reduction in premiums with the Health Security America Health plan, why would you want to pay twice as much? Your doctors and hospitals won’t change.
3. I am unemployed –will I be able to afford the premium?
If your unemployment continues to the point that you can not afford to continue paying Health Security America, you will go to the appropriate government agency (probably the same one that previously had run Medicaid), tell them that you cannot pay the premium and present your evidence. They will pay for your premium until you are able.
4. I am a health care worker. Wouldn’t my income become volatile under the Health Security America plan?
Most jobs in the health care industry will still be there, except many in administration. Generally these people have business degrees and can expect to be absorbed elsewhere. (From 1970 through 1996 health administrators increased 20-fold while doctors increased only 2.5 times.) I would rather think of the jobs in commerce that will be more plentiful after health insurance stops destroying the bottom line.
There will be no “cabooses and conductors on freight trains,” referring to the featherbedding of jobs in the past on railroads. Doctors, nurses and other support personnel—the backbone of the health care system—will always have work.
5. How do I join the Coalition for a Health Secure America? How can I help?
By joining the coalition and contributing you can help, by finding groups we can make presentations to, and make a presentation on a straight-forward health plan even clearer. We will use coalition funds to cover the costs of the travel to the best of our abilities. Brochures, mailings as the need is discovered will use this money. If it is a long distance we might have to ask for a contribution to help the coalition out.
The initial presenter will be Dr. Bannister, author of Health Security America: Fixing the health care crisis. Notifying your political leadership about the plan will also be valuable. Communication is critical to the success of the Health Security America plan. Think about whom you can talk to about the plan and do it. Keep your book handy if there are some references needed and suggest that others get the bookif they are interested and want to help. Purchasing the book can be done on this site. And joining the Coalition for a Health-Secure America can also be done on this site. The book sells for $15.95 and Coalition membership is $10 per year. Buy one or the other separately, but if you buy both at once we will send the book including shipping for $25.
We are going to create a page on website for members to observe the money we spend from the coalition and all the activities we in which we participate. We will ask you to give us suggestions. We need money for travel and communication activities such as this website as a first priority.
The original members of the coalition and some others are people who will be asked to advise, filter ideas, offer ideas and recommend expenditures. These people earlier volunteered to proof the manuscript, clarify, recommend changes and in most cases wrote mini-dissertations to the author on Health Security America: Fixing the health care crisis
This citizen coalition is already quite varied, with a former school superintendent, bank president, former industrialist, physician, pharmacist, director of nurses, nurses, secretary of our local political party, teacher, clinic lead person/ administrator, hospital administrator, college instructor, union member, student teacher, former patients of the author, political party communications director and some of its members, and former high school media teacher.
The executive director initially running the day to day operations will be Dr. Fred Bannister, and the spokesperson/advocate for the health plan will be Aaron Kittelson a UPS Driver Union Member. There is no salary for either person, so any other volunteer help will be most appreciated. Thank You.
6. My neighbor carries HSA insurance but doesn’t participate in the hearings or really care about the day to day operations of HSA. Who will moderate his health care decisions on my behalf?
Remember, we start out with Medicare procedures, rules, fees and other guidelines. Before this plan is implemented, many more procedures may be added, fees determined and guidelines established. Your neighbor will have his opportunity to participate in the hearing process, vote and have his influence and will live with the results. If he doesn’t participate, a significant portion of the 295 million people in the US will do so.
There are many concerned citizens, some with health problems, some with financial problems—enough of all people with various concerns to give us a workable plan. If ignorance, poverty or inability to travel are a problem and interfere in participation, others will fill the gap. You will have much more representation in HSA than in any insurance or government assistance that you now have. And it will be access to the same health care that everyone else in this country has.
7. What exactly does Congress have to do to get Health Security America functional?
- Congress
will have to set the minimum level of income for individuals and families
for the government to pay their premiums to Health Security America.
The minimum income may or may not be the same as eligibility is for
Medicaid now. Congress will also have to oversee the transfer of monies
collected from the elderly (formerly collected for Medicare) are transferred
to pay the premiums of HSA.
- Congress
will have to form the quasi-corporation as designed in the book Health
Security America: Fixing the health care crisis. The new corporation's
by-laws will make sure none of its eight key rules are violated.
- Congress will fund the money for start up of this health plan. This money will be paid back over time from premiums as described in the book. ( Remember, HSA is self-funded)
8. I agree with everything you have said—but how will you ever get it implemented?
First of all, here are some givens:
- Thirty years have
gone by and clinics have gotten bigger, managed care plans abound. Hillary
and Bill Clinton tried to bring about reform—when their party
had control of Congress, no less. The fight will not be easy.
- Drug companies,
insurance companies, device manufacturers and professional groups continue
to have their way with Congress, with the new Medicare Part D drug bill
as only one example.
- Virtually all of our leaders in the political world believe we have a terrible health care crisis. Statistics prove it beyond a doubt, and yet no overhaul of our health system has been attempted in over a decade.
Here is what we are going to do in addition to the book we have written, using Teddy Roosevelt's premise that “we are the government, you and I.”
- We will
continue to try to keep our politicians aware of Health Security America,
because it offers health care to all Americans, regardless of pre-existing
conditions, and there are no premiums for kids under 19 years. Plus
HSA will pay for itself, the government helping only those in need by
paying their premium.
We will do this with brochures, speaking engagements, debates with professional and industry groups if need be. We will use any effective technique such as blogs and this website as an example.
- We understand,
regardless of claims to the contrary, that our politicians are forced
to listen to special interest groups. That’s the way it works
in this country, whether we like it or not. We are going to form an
interest group and we will make it a powerful one. It will be made up
of citizens who are uninsured, citizens abused by enormous inequities
in health care charges, and simply citizens willing to contribute in
order to right a terrible wrong in the health delivery system in this
country.
We are forming the Coalition for a Health-Secure America. We will ask people to contribute $10 per year to help fund it. We will take the money, plus any profits we get out of the book Health Security America: Fixing the health crisis, plus other contributions, and send a speaker to present the plan to any group that will have us— until we wear out the speaker. Social groups, business groups, educational groups, government, unions all will be our target. The group can be big or small.
Through our diligence, people will learn that HSA has the basics for a universal, single payer health plan and it does not break the government bank. As people become aware of some of the fixes demanded by HSA to fix our American health care system, politicians will have to start doing something. People with a book in hand or even just notes are going to start asking, "What about the administrative waste in physician and clinic services of $142 billion annually? What about those continual hospital ads on TV?" They'll have read that the fee structures of hospitals vary by as much as 112%. Yes, we are going to have to address fees that are 500% different for the same procedure on people who live on the same block. The books spells it out. And our coalition will hammer this same mantra. Since "we are the government, you and I," someone will have to listen.
- I suspect
one of the first results we will get will be a challenger to an incumbent
in Congress. The incumbent is going to have to answer to his achievements
(or lack of same) on health care reform. There won’t be much there
for many of our incumbents. I expect the challengers to pick up much
of our plan, if not all, which we will help him understand and use to
hammer the incumbent.
There is enough fodder here with which to win or lose an election. Every poll indicates that health care is the number one concern of all Americans, after Iraq. The noise coming out of Congress does not reflect this consuming worry about health care, but it will. We will work for that. So if you want to help, please buy a book for the guidance you will need, and contribute ten dollars to the coalition to get the word out.
9. Will my employer pay my premium?
HSA is a health insurance just as you may have or may have had in the past. Your union might negotiate this, or your employer might simply make it part of your benefit package. There is nothing new here from the past as far as acquiring the insurance.
10. Will insurance actuaries help determine allowable treatments and medicines?
The answer to this is yes. Let me explain: I use the question of whether HSA will cover abortions in the book. I chose a controversial question to stress how HSA works.
The actuaries will determine the cost of doing the procedure and what cost would be added to the monthly premium if citizens vote to have this coverage. The citizens will weigh the pros and cons and all the information posted on the website and given at the hearings. Citizens will then vote on the issue—in this case whether or not to cover abortions. It is the citizens who will be the ultimate decisionmaker, after reviewing and considering all the information given, some of it from actuaries.
11. My current health insurance pays for a private room if I am in the hospital. Will HSA cover it, too?
Remember, we start out with Medicare rules and fees as a baseline, then go from there. Currently, Medicare does not pay for a private room. Citizens, through Health Security America governance procedures, may decide they want to cover private rooms.
Even if it does not become standard HSA coverage, if you ultimately decide that you want a private room, I am sure one of the insurance companies will sell you a private room add-on to your basic HSA policy. The premium that you pay will be for the basic policy that all citizens have decided meets the expectations of all Americans (that is, this premium determined by citizens) plus the additional premium, determined by the insurance company, to cover a private room.
12. What if I need a knee replacement and am unable to lose the recommended weight beforehand. Will HSA cover the knee replacement surgery?
Yes, but you will have already been informed there is risk to your surgery, you will have been counseled on weight loss and you will have already waited and tried to lose weight. There will be many people finding out and trying the program discovering they need not take the surgical risk, and will have lost weight and now have no pain. They will have averted surgery and saved HSA a lot of money—many millions of dollars each year.
To answer in another way, you will not be overweight, walk into your doctor’s office with painful knees and be on the surgical schedule the very next week. You will have to at least try the conservative method of losing weight, first. You will have a time frame during which you will have to try and help yourself, and it will be a reasonable one. The amount of time for a trial of weight loss would be in the rules developed on a national basis and determined by the HSA governance process.
13. Why are the non-compete employee contracts and closed insurance panels no longer tolerated in your 8 unbendable rules?
The non-compete clauses have to be removed from current and future employee contracts so that physicians and other providers may again manage their own practices and business. This is the source of much of Health Security America savings. The savings in physician and clinic services approach 40%. It is anticipated at least $142 billion annually will be saved in this category alone.
Disallowing closed-panel insurance panels is also crucial to our goals. In doing so, we will be discarding the redlining and sequestering of patients by greedy insurance companies in favor of choice and free and healthy competition. People simply must be able to see the doctor of their choice—and where they choose to see him or her. No one group will be allowed a hold on the individual patient as they sometimes have now. As it stands now, the patient has no choice due to rules of his or her health insurance policy should a managed care plan be offered by his or her employer. This is not a petty rule. This is a very important rule.
14. What happens if I don’t take the HSA insurance and I get sick?
Health Security America is totally voluntary. You may risk no HSA insurance, but if you become sick you will go to your doctor and hospital for care. You will be billed HSA fees and be expected to pay them the same as any other bill you might have.
15. What about dental and long term care insurance?
Health Security America starts with the current Medicare rules and fees, which currently do not include dental or long term care insurance. Citizens through the governance process can add whatever coverage they want, provided that the majority agrees. It is a democratic process. I doubt that dental and long-term coverage will be included as part of the basic HSA coverage, but it is not my decision to make—it is ours as a body of interested citizens. The mechanism for change is in the HSA plan.
16. The regional representatives are elected. How will you keep them free of outside special interest influence?
Health Security America will do this in several ways:
First, the elections are publicly financed.
Second, there is a three-year delay after leaving the elected post before he or she can work as a lobbyist in the health care field.
Third, there is a referendum scheduled for seven years out that will allow a direct vote by the people on governance issues. This is debatable and I for one, would not be opposed to this happening at an earlier time. I trust the citizen. That is you!
Is there a foolproof way to stop outside influence? Probably not, but Health Security America is as isolated from this influence as is possible in a democratic society. The author is open to any added suggestions in this matter.
Health Security America is the remedy.
Design
by Four Leaf Clover.