Illinois has passed a bill which may lead to Universal Health Care in the State by the year 2007. The bill was the result of hard work by the Campaign for Better Health Care and other grassroots organizations. There is now a period of public hearings about the problem, which will be followed by proposals about how to fix the problem. The task force created must submit a plan for Universal, High Quality and Affordable Health Care for All.

At Access Living we support a Public Health Insurance System, commonly known as "Single Payer", a system which is available in many European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan and Taiwan. This system has a track record for being cheaper and having far better results than the U.S. health system.

1. Public Health Insurance would have lower administrative costs. Competing private insurers have huge costs from screening out high-cost customers, and trying to stick others with the bill. Medicare, a single payer system for seniors and the disabled, spent less than 2% of its resources on administration in 2003; private insurers spent more than 13%.

2. It provides savings from bargaining with suppliers, especially drug companies,for lower prices. Both Medicaid and the VA get discounts similar to or greater than the Canadian health care system. The new drug bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices, even for the private insurers.

3. Government participation in health care delivery would reduce the fragmentation and chaos we currently have by integrating record keeping and universal quality control.

4. The results of the Medicare Part D addition to Medicare shows what a nightmare a grafting on of private insurance to a public insurance has been and proves again that overly complicated health systems are a failure. The complexity of dealing with competing plans, with complicated eligibility forms, with obscure rules are a cruel gift to seniors, the disabled, and their families. Who would not have preferred a straight forward drug benefit directly from Medicare?

Why don't most of our politicians and even some progressive health care reformers put a Single Payer Plan on the table? Why do they say that the American people won't go for it without putting it forward seriously as a viable plan? Polls taken prove otherwise. Taking on the drug companies and the insurance companies is a formidable task but the seriousness of the deepening health care crisis leaves us with this imperative. The people can also be formidable.

A Single Payer National Health Insurance is the necessary and only rastional choice. Let's organize and FIGHT for this system in Illinois and on the Federal level.

We say "EVERYBODY IN! NOBODY OUT!".

Access Living
115 W. Chicago Av.
Chicago, IL 60610

312-640-2100 Voice, 800-613-8549 Toll-free
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www.accessliving.org