Make health coverage a human right

Consider the following: more than 45 million Americans are uninsured, with an additional 25 million underinsured; because of growing joblessness, some 14,000 Americans are losing health care coverage daily; every 30 seconds, someone in the U.S. files for bankruptcy because of medical bills; each year more than 18,000 Americans die because of no health insurance; U.S. health care expenditures ($7,129 per capita) are more than twice as expensive as other industrialized nations; needless administrative costs consume approximately 31 percent of Americans' health care dollars; and by eliminating "for-profit" health care insurance, approximately $387 billion will be saved annually in this country.

Legislation has been introduced that will create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system by improving and expanding the already existing Medicare program to all U.S. residents. H.R. 676 would ensure that all Americans have access, guaranteed by law, to the highest quality and most cost effective health care services regardless of a person's employment, income or health care status. In short, health care would become a human right, as it is already in virtually every other industrialized country in the world.

Other "universal" health care proposals simply do not reform our fragmented, inefficient system; they just add to its complexity and costs, for the enrichment of the "for-profit" insurance companies, CEOs and stockholders. These proposals do not improve the insurance we now have - they don't regulate insurance premiums, they don't keep insurance companies from refusing to pay many of our bills and they don't prevent insurance companies from dropping us from coverage.

Please contact your congressman to co-sponsor and vote for H.R. 676 to provide a necessary single-payer "Medicare for All" health care system for the benefit and human right of all Americans.

John Clark

Fox River Grove