Editor:
Tired is a modest term for what we consider a wearying repetition of the “OMG, ain’t it awful; the state of health care in Humboldt (and the rest of the nation).” Once again we hear policy experts and healthcare leaders bemoaning the reality of a system that ope rates like a business where profit and loss control the availability of care while the majority of us see health care as a human right that should be promoted over profit to a few (NCJ Daily, Jan. 30).
The Redwoods Rural Health Center CEO, Seth Whitmer, describes this “unfortunate story” as something that “none of us can really fix … I can’t fix the payment system.” This is not only defeatist but is patently wrong. We can fix it.
We have been working for some three decades explaining the successful operation of the many different forms of universal, single-payer health care enjoyed by every other advanced nation on earth, spending half what we do and with startlingly better health outcomes.
The payments system utilized by other nations cuts out the profiteering middlemen and uses public assets for public care. We could easily do the same, organizing healthcare payment by one nonprofit trust fund, built from public revenue.
It has been repeatedly calculated that individuals, families, businesses and government agencies would all save under such a system. Humboldt County, for example, now contributes to the health insurance policies of its employees to the tune of more than $21 million per year. What is the advantage of health insurance that contributes nothing to health care? It is time for the public to demand legislators eschew pocket-lining donations from corporate health insurance and embrace a nonprofit, universal, single-payer system. It’s doable and it’s up to us to do it.
To learn more, visit the websites for Health Care for All California or Physicians for a National Health Program, or email healthcareforallhumboldt@gmail.com.
Patty Harvey, Willow Creek
This article appears in The Humboldt County Fair is at a Crossroads.