All citizens will have to help a President Obama give us the health care we need!

It has been some months since I have published the Independent Reviewer as something was never quite finished either at the state level or nothing was happening at the national level. This seems to have righted itself with Obama’s health plan and his health care advisors revealed. McCain’s plan is virtually no significant plan change from our present health care distribution system so it makes the writing much simpler. Before going any further you need to agree with me on at least one item- “Health care is a right and not a privilege”. If you are an American who feels you have to have money before you walk into your doctor’s office for health care or you don’t have a right to get it then probably reading on is not important for you. Once you agree that a health care plan fulfills the needs allowing all citizens in American Society access to health care regardless of finances or current health condition then all that needs to be done is refine it and make it work efficiently. The devil need not be in the details but details cannot be hidden and must be dealt with for the plan to answer to the above bold statement of conviction.

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Obama’s plan allows every American access to health care. Some fleshing out as to what basic care is remains to be done and for now it is stated as equal to what are congressmen receive. This plan will evolve and there is plenty of fat still allowed that will have to be cut even in our congressmen’s health plans.

Obama’s health care plan allowed to work has to be affordable. The description of electronic records and the savings it will provide are certainly worthy and we need to do them. In Northwest Wisconsin where I reside the average cost of health insurance for a family of four is $1564.53 per month. Cutting cost $2500 per year is not insignificant but still some distance from where we need to go. Japan and Sweden live longer than we do and their health insurance cost is exactly ½ of ours.

I remain upbeat about the Obama plan as we have a start to at least get to where we want to go and standby our conviction that “Health care is a right and not a privilege”.

Senator Obama has raised the majority of his campaign contributions from small donations of less than 100 dollars. This will allow him to address some of the other cost issues that are going to step on special interest toes such as the drug companies, insurance companies, professional provider groups, hospital associations and large clinics. I will mention some of these very costly items that need to be addressed and we will need to prepare for a fight as there are a lot of very high salaried people that do not want to have a reduction in pay, some as high as $124 million salary in one year for a CEO of one of the large health management companies. I ask you to look at campaign contributions at the many websites that show where our legislators get their money. They have to have money to run for re-election and when it comes in large amounts from the health care industry they are going to have a hard time not answering the phone when these same large contributors calls. I am pleading with our legislators to set aside these contributions for the sake of all Americans and do what is right. This pleading aside if health care does not become affordable after there is a Democratic Congress the only solution will be severe campaign finance reform and that could take years to never, so folks, all of you are going to have to be involved in getting affordable health insurance not just a President Obama.

To expand the $2500 savings too there is a hit list that will need to be addressed and I am convinced Senator Obama has the courage to do it and the real pressure will need to be put on our Congressmen. President Obama will not be allowed to do this alone. Look at what still remains to be done to get the $2500 per savings down to a $9600 per year that matches Japan and Sweden and lets us live longer as well while still allowing us to meet our conviction that health care is a right and not a privilege. Please try and look at this as common sense and not a Democratic and Republican issue.

All of us will have to help a President Obama make health care an affordable right for all Americans by addressing the following list!

1. Hospitals: They will have to be put under regional citizen control. We cannot continue to have prime time ads touting one hospital over another. We cannot have valet service, waterfalls in the atrium and most of all the medical arms race between hospitals allowing for severe duplication of services and even empty rooms in one hospital while the other builds five new floors. Are closed staff hospitals appropriate if it demands we duplicate services in another nearby hospital to accommodate the other physicians in town?

2. Large Clinics: The demand that all new provider employees sign non-ending non-compete contracts disallowing any hope of reducing costs by the provider employee if he would seek independent working status in his community in the future. I know of no other corporate structure in America that has a binding never ending contract such as this. Analysis of this subject alone has shown potential savings of 145 billion dollars per year.

3. Insurance Companies: No company would enter into a business without attempting to make a 10% profit. Why would citizens allow this terrible drain on our limited resources? Medicare and our Social Security System does not allow this why would we continue to drain our health system of 100-200 billion dollars per year.

4. Drug companies: The corporate system we have does not fit very well in the health field allowing drug companies to charge our citizens in some instances $10 for a pill and another country’s citizens $1 for the same pill. This is true because the citizen has to have the medicine and he can’t say no I don’t need it. Our citizens are disallowed the right to buy their medicine in the cheaper country. While regulators tell our citizens through the FDA that Canada may have inferior medicines and cause us risk; this remains false and insulting to our friends. No, this will have to change.

5. Professional Provider Groups:

Have been able to influence what procedures are paid for by some government health plans even thought these procedures have not shown any better benefit that more simpler safer treatments. This cannot continue.

The list being addressed will get us a long ways to finally making health care affordable and a right and not a privilege. How to address these issues has been dealt with in separate dissertations but all can be found in more depth and explained in the book “Health Security America: Fixing the Health Care Crisis”, a citizens’ guide to reforming our health care system.

Thank you,

Fred Bannister, M.D.

Chairman

Board of Directors

Coalition for a Health-Secure America

fredb@healthsecurityamerica.com

Dr. Bannister is the author of the book Health Security America: Fixing the Health Care Crisis, a citizens’ guide to reforming our health care system. This is available as well as other archived health care dissertations by Dr. Bannister at

http://www.healthsecurityamerica.com

The book Health Security America is available free on the Net at:

http://www.healthsecurityamerica.com/ehsa.pdf

Health Security America is the remedy.