SOME RECENT STATEMENTS SUPPORTING UHC

This thread unlike the others is not based on individuals responding to one another.  Instead, it is a series of prominent organizational AND political endorsements for UHC.

Including:

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

This passage is from "Health and Wholeness" (pages 263-268), readopted in 2000.

"We support the following principles of access to health services:

(1) In a just society, all people are entitled to basic maintenance and health care services. We reject as contrary to our understanding of the gospel the notion of differing standards of health care for various segments of the population.

(2) Health care should be comprehensive, including preventive, therapeutic, and rehabilitative services.

(3) Religious and other appropriate forms of counseling should be available to all patients and families when they are called upon to make difficult medical choices, so that responsible decisions, within the context of the Christian faith, may be made concerning organ transplants, use of extreme measures to prolong life, abortion, sterilization, genetic counseling, institutionalization and death with dignity.

(4) We encourage development of community support systems that permit alternatives to institutional care for such groups as the aging, the terminally ill and mentally ill, and other persons with special needs."

DENNIS KUCINICH MAKES STATEMENT ON UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

, Candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

I see a new horizon for health care for all Americans with a universal, single payer system. Today such coverage is available to Americans over the age of 65. We need a new Medicare, Part E (for Everyone) which will relieve the suffering and uncertainty of 44 million Americans who currently have no health coverage and the economic pain of those who are paying exorbitant rates for their health insurance.

Many cannot afford health insurance. Some do not have jobs. Some have lost their jobs. Some are people who have jobs yet do not have coverage. You and I know people who do not have health care coverage, Who do not get diagnosed in time. Who end up dying prematurely. This is what happens with a market-based system. Here again, we are asked to consciously choose our priorities: Between the claims of the community and the claims of commerce. Between the requirement for economic justice and the imperative for profit. Between the public interest and private interest.

A market-based approach to health care benefits no one except the insurance companies. HMO's are more costly than Medicare. People are getting less care. Fewer people can get a doctor of choice. Fewer people can get the treatment they need. People are waiting longer for appointments. Pre-existing illnesses are being used to deny coverage. Physicians are given monetary incentives to deny care.

On January 1, 1999, 400,000 Medicare patients lost their HMO coverage. HMO's claimed the reimbursement rates were too low, so seniors were denied coverage. Remember this date. Because it predicts a trend if we allow Congress to privatize Medicare. We must challenge this system. We must change this system. Our Democratic party can claim universal, single-payer health care as our cause, health care for all, in a nation which recognizes that a government for the people means all people must have an opportunity to survive.

This is our challenge and let this be our cause, to repair the health of our nation and its people, to establish health care as a basic human right through creating single payer, universal health care in the United States.

We must replace the managed care and insurance industry which is holding doctors, patients and the health care system itself captive. We are already paying for national health care. We are spending for it. We are not getting it. Government expenditures account for nearly 60% of health care costs. Our government spends more per capita $4,500 than any nation except Switzerland. We spend $1.2 trillion, that's more per capita and a larger percent of our Gross Domestic Product (13%) for health care than nations that have national health insurance.

The General Accounting Office in Washington has written "If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage." A 7% payroll tax and a 2 percent income tax would provide the financing. Compare this with a trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy.

We could put in its place a single government fund which pays all medical expenses and provides singular protection against illness.

AFL-CIO RENEWS DRIVE FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FEBRUARY 25, 2003
(excerpted) Skip to paragraphs on UHC

The deepening health care crisis occupies center stage in the life of the nation and in the lives of millions of Americans - an urgent situation that requires the union movement to show unstinting determination and unwavering leadership in leading a renewed campaign for comprehensive health care reform that will ensure affordable, high quality health care for all. No issue is more important to the men, women and children who have no health coverage or to the ever-growing ranks of those who are at risk of losing it. For unions and their members, health care is at the top of the bargaining agenda.

The economic downturn that is being aided and abetted by the failed policies of the Bush Administration is wiping out incremental gains in health care coverage achieved in the late 1990s. Once again, it falls to the American unions to mount the campaign for comprehensive health care reform.

In contract negotiations large and small, we need to hold the line against employer attempts to push health costs onto working family budgets. At the grass roots, we must demand action from both state and federal legislators to constrain costs, expand access to coverage, level the playing field among employers, and improve the quality of care.

As much as anything else, we need to turn the 2004 elections into a referendum on whether all Americans should finally be able to get affordable, high quality health care with their right to choose their own doctor. A large and growing number of Americans have no health insurance at all: 41.2 million people had no insurance in 2001, 1.4 million more than the previous year. Out- of-control health care cost increases are putting enormous pressure on job-based health plans. State- based health insurance programs are threatened not only by spiraling costs but also by the growing state fiscal crisis and the lack of help from the federal government. And Medicare recipients still have no access to a comprehensive prescription drug benefit through that universal program.

The health care crisis confronting the nation demands real leadership, but President George W. Bush has failed to offer constructive responses to the country's health care challenges. Instead, he is playing a shell game with families'Medicare and Medicaid benefits and putting forward private insurance proposals that threaten to weaken the security of workers'health benefits.

The administration's proposal to change Medicare - by spending $400 billion over the next 10 years to create a prescription drug benefit within the Medicare+Choice program and propping up the floundering Medicare+Choice managed care program - is deeply flawed and falls short of meeting seniors' pressing needs. The president's plan forces seniors to leave the Medicare coverage they trust and turn instead to profit-motivated Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) for both their drug coverage and their basic health care. That means insurance executives rather than Medicare would decide how much to charge and what to offer.

Far more than the $400 billion the president proposes is needed to provide a meaningful drug benefit to seniors. According to the Congressional Budget Office's newest projections, the cost of outpatient prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries over the next 10 years (2004-2013) will total $1.84 trillion.

The administration's flagship proposal to address the growing ranks of the uninsured - a refundable tax credit for the purchase of health insurance, costing $89 billion over 10 years - fails uninsured Americans and jeopardizes job-based coverage for low- and middle- income workers.

The proposed premium credit assistance ignores the high costs of individual polices and the difficult circumstances facing those most in need. According to a recent study by the Center for Studying Health System Change, premiums for individual policies in 1998 and 1999 ranged from $1,452 a year for a young adult (age 18 to 29) in excellent health to $3,276 per year for an early or near retiree (age 55 to 64) in poor health. Under the Bush plan, an individual who had $20,000 in annual income and no dependents would be eligible for a $556 premium credit, only slightly more than one-third the cost of the least expensive policy. Maximum benefits under the Bush plan are available only to individuals who earn $15,000 or less per year (in modified adjusted gross income) and who have no dependents and to all other filers with $25,000 or less in income.

President Bush's proposal to create Association Health Plans (AHPs) raises troubling questions. AHPs are described often by proponents as a panacea for small businesses trying to purchase affordable coverage in an era of double-digit health care inflation. In fact, proposals, such as President Bush's, that would exempt AHPs from state regulation would do little to address the current small employer insurance crisis and would leave all working families paying more for less health coverage.

At best, AHPs would offer minimal benefits that are attractive only to young and healthy workers, raising costs for older and sicker workers remaining in other group health plans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that less than 1 percent of the uninsured will gain coverage through AHPs and four out of five workers in small firms will see their premiums increase.

To the extent that younger, healthier workers migrated to AHPs on the promise of lower costs, traditional group insurance coverage would see costs rise dramatically, especially for small and medium size firms, where costs are already rising over 20 percent per year. Insurers in this market, notably Blue Cross Blue Shield, believe that the group insurance market could be destroyed as a result, an outcome that many independent experts also believe possible.

Now, even more than in the past, the AFL-CIO believes strongly that universal coverage is the best and ultimately only way to achieve the goal of extending affordable, high quality health care to all Americans. Until we are able to move to such a system, the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions, along with state federations and central labor councils, will:

Maintain a broad-based and focused educational and informational campaign about the crisis in health care, targeting activities at the national, state and local level;

Explore and analyze the cost, feasibility and strategies to provide comprehensive, high quality and affordable health care to all Americans,

Continue to support federal legislative and regulatory initiatives to cut health care costs, improve quality and expand coverage, including efforts to enact an affordable, comprehensive prescription drug benefit within Medicare that is available to all beneficiaries and that recognizes and supports the contributions of employer- sponsored retiree plans,

At the federal level, seek waivers and other appropriate legislative and regulatory measures that will allow states to engage in responsible innovation designed to boost coverage, improve quality and lower costs,

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D. on UHC

As a doctor, I understand the fear facing families without health insurance. As a Governor, I am proud that virtually every child under 18 and more than 92 percent of adults in Vermont are eligible for health coverage. But as a country, the United States can do better.

To help finance this effort, we must repeal the President's tax cuts -- which have thrown America back into the huge deficits of the 1980s -- and begin to balance the federal budget. We cannot build crucial social programs without a solid financial foundation.

Guaranteeing coverage to all Americans will involve a mix of state and federal programs, as well as the existing private sector. Similar to our program in Vermont, states should be required to guarantee coverage for all children under age 23. In return, the federal government should assume responsibility for drug and acute medical care for Americans over age 65. In addition, older Americans deserve a pharmacy benefit under Medicare - an unaffordable impossibility under the current fiscal policies of President Bush. With a pharmaceutical package, Medicare becomes a decent insurance program. Finally, to cover those between the ages of 23 and 65, we should use the present employer-based system with refundable tax credits and federal subsidies to cover low- and moderate-income Americans who lack insurance.

This plan is affordable and simple, relying on three existing systems - one for children, one for seniors, and one for those in between - which all Americans can understand.