Western Maine citizens will be gathering Wednesday, May 6th to talk about the momentum building toward real change in the U. S. health care system. The time is 7 P.M, the place, the Education Center, Room 113, Corner of High and Lincoln Streets, University of Maine, Farmington.
From the administration of President Harry Truman on, reform attempts have come and gone. One of the promises bringing Barack Obama to the presidency this year was basic change in U.S. health care. Maine HealthCare Reform is a new group, one of many nationwide, engaged in the process of educating and advocating for such change.
South Paris resident Tom Whitney, local representative of Maine HealthCare reform, says the time is long past to act on the premise that health care is a human right. It’s a matter of urgency now, he suggests, in view of lost health insurance associated with unemployment, heavy debt loads, and businesses increasingly unable to afford rising health insurance costs.
The May 6th meeting will begin with a short video and brief presentation of reform alternatives before Congress. Most of the time will be devoted to discussion and plans for what Maine people can do.
Whitney points out that while US health care costs per capita are double those anywhere else, life expectancy is comparatively low and infant death rates high. Over 50 million citizens lack insurance.
Maine HealthCare reform is calling for a single payer type health care system that would phase out waste and extra profiteering associated with private insurance. Last month the Maine State legislature passed a resolution calling upon elected officials in Washington to pass legislation similar to either House bill HR 676 or the Senate proposal, S. 703. Both are single payer plans.
National polling data gives single payer health care approval ratings exceeding 60 percent. A Maine Medical Association member survey last year indicated a majority of Maine physicians support single payer health care.
Maine HealthCare reform is staging a rally for Health care for all at the State House in Augusta on May 30th.
For more information, go to midcoasthealthcarereform.org or pnhp.org, the web site for Physicians for a National Health program.
Obviously, whatever program is being promoted here, doctors love it. But do consumers?
I have become very wary of programs to put everybody on health insurance. I do not believe in health insurance and do not buy it, for several reasons, one of which is that it encourages doctors to overcharge. The consumer winds up footing the bill in the form of increased insurance premiums.
I get a bill from Franklin Memorial Hospital for a physician’s services, and it isn’t even written in English. It is written in some code that I suppose is used by insurance companies. An insurance company would have no way of knowing whether the amount billed is excessive, since they weren’t there in the doctor’s office to see what the doctor did. I WAS there, so I know the bill is 3 or 4 times what it should be. I complain, but nobody cares; after all, I am just a number in a computer. I tell them I will pay for this doctor’s services when I get a bill that is fair, accurate, and written in plain English. Nobody responds to this request, they just keep sending me the same exorbitant bill, with threats, all churned out by their computers which don’t know how to read or write English.
So now I must try to find an honest doctor who will treat my problem (preferably one NOT associated with some oversized network), who will charge a fair fee which I will pay to him or her, not to some “billing office.” God protect us against those who would have all the doctors using the same computers, and everyone’s health mortgaged to some statewide billing office.
Licia Kuenning
Farmington