Media Advisory:
Greens Call Patients' Bill of Rights Laws Inadequate and a Distraction
From the Greater Health Care Crisis: 44 Million Uninsured Americans,
Millions More with Poor Coverage.
Thursday, June 28, 2001
|
The Association of State Green Parties
Media Advisory: Thursday, June 28, 2001 |
|
Contacts: The only solution to health care problems remains a universal health care system which provides coverage and access to all, says the Green Party WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Green Party condemns the current fight in Congress over HMO accountability as a distraction from the goal of guaranteed health care for every American. Competing bills, now facing Congressional votes and a threatened White House veto, represent a minor advance in the movement for accountability of managed care corporations. But the bills are a sham that will provide no overall improvement in the current health care system. Most states already have better laws on the books; the federal law would only add the federally-regulated ERISA plans to the majority of plans now regulated by the states. "As long as Congress continues to debate side issues like the right to sue one's HMO or employer and damage caps, they can avoid the real crisis -- 44 million uninsured Americans and inadequate coverage for many of those with insurance," said Scott McLarty, media co-coordinator for the Association of State Green Parties, member of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, and former ACT UP activist. "The U.S. has the best medical technology and resources in the world, but a failed delivery system. That's what HMOs, insurance firms, and drug manufacturers don't want us to talk about. Most Americans want the same access to health care that people in every other industrialized nation have. Single-payer national health insurance is the only solution." "Patients' Rights laws, whether introduced by Senators McCain and Edwards or by Senators Frist, Jefford, and Breaux, are band-aids at best and may even cause an increase in people without insurance," added Carol Miller, a New Mexico Green and public health advocate. The laws would do nothing to provide treatment for more than 44 million uninsured Americans, or to compel HMOs and insurance companies to cover people who need health care the most - those with pre-existing conditions or chronic illnesses like AIDS, and older Americans. And despite the media's endless coverage of the right to sue, most aggrieved patients will never take legal action. Many are too physically or mentally debilitated to undertake a lawsuit against HMOs and insurance companies. Greens favor publicly-run health and social services instead of profit-driven private corporations, and oppose the corporate take-over of publicly owned services and resources, such as the plan to turn Social Security into a Wall Street investment scheme, school vouchers, corporate disbursal of welfare benefits, the contracts with Dyncorp for mercenary operations under Plan Colombia, and the rise of incarceration in private prisons. The Green Party demands national health insurance based on the single-payer model, and joins with Physicians for a National Health Program, the Labor Party, and many labor unions, medical organizations, and citizens' groups to work for its enactment. Under such a system, all Americans would be covered regardless of age, ability to pay, residence, employment, or prior medical condition. Physicians and hospitals would compete for consumers on the basis of quality of care, not cost. The plan would be funded through a progressive tax which, for most Americans -- especially poor, low-, and middle-income people -- would be less than what we now pay for private and employer-based coverage. The Democratic Party endorsed national health insurance in 1948, but discarded the idea in 1996 when it was removed from the national Democrat Party platform. Universal health care was absent from the Democrat and Republican national campaigns in 1996 and 2000 and missing from Al Gore's 2000 platform. Instead, Gore and Bush debated small incremental ideas for adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and the so-called patients rights proposals. Only Ralph Nader discussed national health insurance, but he was barred from the presidential debates; the mainstream media mostly ignored his call for health care justice. MORE INFORMATION: search: spol, ecpol |