Physicians, healthcare workers, and individuals throughout Kentucky have joined forces to pass a law that would provide healthcare to everyone who needs it.
Kentuckians For Single Payer Health Care (KSPH) based in Louisville, is an alliance of groups and individuals whose mission is urging Congress to pass the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act (HR 676). The bill, if passed, will provide healthcare insurance to all Americans.
HR 676 goes beyond the shortcomings of Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Over fifty million Americans do not have insurance. The ACA would leave over half of them uninsured.
Kay Tillow, a veteran civil rights activist who helped organize KSPH, points out that HR 676 will provide Medicare coverage to all Americans. Switching from private insurance to Medicare for all sounds expensive, Tillow says, but isn’t. The Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) estimate more than $400 billion a year in administrative costs would be saved and this will be enough to cover comprehensive healthcare for everyone in the United States.
What HR 676 will do
HR 676 will:
- Provide coverage for all medically necessary care: doctors, hospitals, prescriptions, nursing homes, mental health, therapists, dental, vision, etc.
- Cover everyone and remain with us if we change or lose our jobs, or retire.
- Replace private health insurance companies with a single streamlined public service agency that will pay all medical claims (much as Medicare works for our seniors today). Monies now going to corporate administrative costs and profits will go instead for needed care.
- Allow us to choose our own doctors and hospitals. No “out-of-network” penalty.
- Eliminate co-pays and deductibles.
- Be publicly funded-just as police and fire protection are paid for. Under a Medicare-for-all plan, we will form one huge pool. Costs and risk will be shared.
- Be truly universal. Regardless of financial, marital, or health status, age, gender, race, or ethnicity, care will be there for each one of us when we need it.
KSPH encourages all Kentuckians to join the group or one of its chapters to build a movement strong enough to convince legislators to pass HR 676.
They encourage members to write letters to the editor, sign their petition, get city councils and other organizations to pass resolutions supporting the bill, and to become more active in the groups projects.
As Tillow wrote in an op-ed, “If every other industrialized nation can make health care a right, we can do it too. Our challenge is to pass effective legislation despite the powerful private health insurance companies and other corporations whose influence often trumps democracy.”
KSPH has chapters in Western and Central Kentucky . They work closely with the Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), Hoosiers for a Common Sense Health Plan (HCHP), Healthcare-NOW and other groups. More information about KSPH is available on their website.
Source: Tillow, Kay; “America Needs a Single Payer Health Care System; http://www.otherwords.org, April 25th, 2011
Zoe Langley - Zoe Langley is a writer living in Kentucky. She is a past winner of the Seattle Writers in Performance Award. She has a passionate ...
