By Benjamin Todd Jealous
(October 14, 2009) - Comprehensive health care reform is a moral and economic imperative because our fiscal and physical well-being are inextricably intertwined.
We recently had our first broad look at the recession’s impact on poverty, income, and health care insurance. Census data showed that in 2008 the nation’s poverty rate jumped to an 11-year high, a decade of income gains were erased and the number of people without health insurance rose to 46.3 million.
If we as a nation had enacted real health care reform a decade ago, we would have prevented 880,000 African American’s from dying, we would have prevented almost 8 million children from going without health care coverage and would have prevented insurance companies from raising premiums by more than 87 percent making it impossible for Americans to afford health insurance.
Those bleak statistics illustrate how critical health care coverage is to our economic security as individuals and as a nation.
A health care overhaul must be a central part of the government’s response to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Let’s view it as a “taxpayer stimulus plan.” We all stand to benefit from changes being considered by Congress. Those of you who have health insurance stand to gain in the way of lower cost, better coverage and more choices. If sweeping reform is achieved, you will no longer have to foot the bill in higher premiums and prices to make up for the unpaid expenses of others.
The NAACP supports emerging legislation on Capitol Hill that would cover individuals regardless of their medical history, prohibit insurance from dropping coverage for people who become seriously ill, and cover preventative care checkups, such as mammograms and colonoscopies.
We can no longer maintain a system that delays, denies and defends the lack of care. Here’s what real reform will do:
Real reform puts physicians back in control of medical care. Doctors should determine the nature and timing of your care, not insurance company bureaucrats. For too long, insurance companies have ruled the health care system. All too often, people are denied access to quality treatment and necessary medications because insurance companies deem them unnecessary. They, in effect, have power over life or death decisions that should be in your hands.
Most Americans receive healthcare through their employer. But millions more have few, if any, choices about the level and costs of their care, especially those who are seasonal workers, unemployed or who have jobs that otherwise don’t provide sufficient coverage. Working class individuals are too often forced to put off preventative care and visit the emergency room only in times of crisis. And sadly, in this country, the color of your skin, your ethnic background and where you live do more than just influence your access to health care, they can determine the quality and cost of your care. Real reform will end arbitrary discrimination and provide access to quality care for everyone.
Unlike the last reform effort, this time an unprecedented coalition of health care providers, drug makers and insurance companies support an overhaul. Their interest, however, is not entirely benevolent. The insurance industry is willing to accept greater federal regulation if Congress requires everyone to have health insurance, thereby increasing its profits.
Extremist political ideologues played into that fear and successfully co-opted the debate during last month’s raucous town hall meetings. They called reform a “risky health care experiment” and an “egregiously expansive and expensive form of government healthcare,” while preventing thoughtful discussion by rational concerned citizens.
While the estimated 10-year, $900 billion price tag for reform sounds hefty, it must be put in perspective. The U.S. spends more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care. Premiums have doubled in this decade and out of pocket expenses for people with insurance have gone up over 30 percent. One out of every $6 in this country is spent on health care. If we do nothing, in 30 years, one-third of this country’s economic output will be tied up in health care costs.
Left unaddressed, our health care system is unsustainable. It is crushing families and businesses, and stunting America’s economic growth.
We agree strongly when President Obama says, “The health care problem is our deficit problem. The cost of inaction is too high. Reform is an investment in our future.”
Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the NAACP.