Make U.S. healthier and wealthier: Provide health insurance for all Labor Day: Universal health care coverage.

(Democrat & Chronicle)James V. Bertolone - Guest Essayist - August 29, 2008

This coming Labor Day, working people from coast to coast will be working for candidates who are ready to turn around our health care system, turn around our economy, turn around the decline of the middle class and turn around America.

Our polling shows that more than 80 percent of Americans think our country is heading in the wrong direction; that our health care system costs too much, excludes too many, covers too little and is getting worse. The drive for universal health care coverage is mobilizing thousands of working people in this year's election cycle.

Whether measured by the World Health Organization, the medical profession or our own government's statistics, our health care costs nearly twice as much per person as that in other industrialized societies.

Of America's gross domestic product, health care costs totaled 17 percent in 2006, and now in 2008 totals more than $7,000 per person.

With costs continuing to rise in a contracting economy, we apparently are heading for $1 out of every $5 spent in our $14 trillion economy going to health care by about the end of this decade.

While other countries have universal health care, we have more than 47 million Americans with no health insurance and more than 25 million underinsured.

We rank 24th among industrialized countries and 37th overall in the key areas for how long we live, infant mortality and immunizations. Only in health care costs does the United States rank No. 1.

We also pay nearly 50 percent more than most industrialized countries for prescription drugs.

In most other countries, the concept of for-profit health care insurance is alien, as health care is considered a universal right.

In a for-profit system, health care companies increase profits by denying coverage to those at risk, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, and by denying medical procedures and tests.

I have yet to meet a person covered by Medicare who wishes to lose that coverage to be at the mercy of for-profit health insurance.

The 15,000 doctors who belong to Physicians for a National Health Program say that 60 percent of the uninsured and 28 percent of insured Americans go without needed care due to costs, resulting in more than 18,000 deaths per year.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,100 mayors, in June endorsed HR 676, single-payer Medicare for all. Back in 2003, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine reported that nearly one-third of U.S. health care costs, $2,300 per person, were due to administration and profits. The article concluded that a single-payer system would reduce administrative costs by $1,150 per person, saving $350 billion a year, enough to insure all uninsured Americans. We know these costs have risen in the past five years.

In our state, there is a large concern about the high cost of property and school taxes. Imagine covering all health care costs for all our police, fire, state, county, city, town and school district employees for less than $4,000 per person, the average cost of universal health care coverage in other industrialized nations. The thousands saved per employee would result in real tax savings.

Companies' health care costs put us at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. Health care costs thwart startup businesses. And they hinder workers' mobility if a potential job excludes coverage for a spouse's or child's pre-existing serious or chronic condition.

This issue is also about family values. We know the primary cause of divorce and family breakup is financial strain. Nearly half of all bankruptcies are due to medical issues, while the other half are due to job loss. In our system, job loss and loss of health insurance are the same issue.

For-profit, deregulated health care is a wound on our country's soul. Labor, with this election cycle and our advocacy after the election, will not stop until universal health care is achieved for all — and we turn around America.

Happy Labor Day.



Bertolone is president, Rochester and Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO; and, president, American Postal Workers Union, Local 215.