|
The Impact You Can Have on the Health Care Debate
Dr. Henry Simmons, President
National Coalition on Health Care
The president of the nation’s largest health care coalition challenged NCPERS’ members to bec ome actively involved in the health care crisis debate. “Without major health system reform,” Dr. Henry Simmons warned, “you will find it impossible to preserve and protect the health insurance benefits your members enjoy today.”
Simmons stressed that the problem cannot be resolved by addressing one or two problems. “We need comprehensive system reform,” he said. “This nation can no longer afford our present, broken system.”
Simmons outlined three significant problems that will occur if we fail to address the health care crisis:
- The cost of health care will increase to unprecedented levels. Already they are rising at the fastest rate in history, and will exceed $2.75 trillion by 2010.
- The number of uninsured will accelerate. Currently we add two million people a year to the group of uninsured Americans.
- The quality of coverage will decline—for everyone, including the insured.
As an example of the rising premium costs, Simmons’s research shows that in only four years the average premium for an employer-sponsored plan will be $14,500—double the amount in almost five years. In three years, Verizon, the largest telecommunications employer in the country, estimates costs for retiree insurance premiums will be $20,000 a year.
The cost of declining coverage is particularly alarming, Simmons said. Today the third leading cause of deaths in the U.S. is inappropriate medical care. Your chances of dying in a hospital are now 1 in 300.
To address this problem Simmons’ coalition urges five goals, which he stressed are achievable without a government-run system:
- health insurance for every American,
- improved quality of care,
- cost containment,
- equitable financing, and
- simplified administration.
Simmons said proof of solutions exist in the health care system available today in many nations around the world. “Every other developed nation in the world has universal coverage and spends one-third to two-thirds as much as we do,” he said, “and has a population that is far more satisfied with their system of care. We do not need more money; we need a better system.”
Simmons has served as president of the National Coalition on Health Care, which NCPERS joined last year, since the organization’s inception in 1990. He has held a variety of distinguished posts in both the public and private sectors. They include serving as assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and director of the Bureau of Drugs at the Food and Drug Administration.
|
