Common ground: HRC 67/100
3 October, 2016 | Index
Dear Hillary Clinton,
Gerard Mclean here, from Englewood, Ohio, just north of Dayton. This is the sixty-seventh letter of one hundred I am writing you on health care; one for each day between your nomination and your election. The previous letters can be found in your USPS mailbox or online at 100HRC.com
I was discussing this letter project with some friends and they suggested I craft definitions for each term so when we talk about health care, we are all speaking the same language. It is an excellent idea, so here goes:
SinglePayer means all the medical facilities remain in place and instead of billing the insurance corporations, they bill a National Health Office (NHO.) A single agency pays, no multiple invoices, no double billing, none of that. The insurance corporations become the record keepers, not the payers. Also, all “premiums” in the form of a general tax from incomes are paid directly into a large insurance fund. No separate insurances, everyone has the same insurance group 319 million people is a large risk pool. The NHO can be staffed from all the people working jobs at insurance corporations that are no longer needed, making them Federal employees… much like the TSA.
UniversalCare means everyone is covered. If you go into an ER with a broken leg, you get treated. Period. No insurance preauthorizations, no copays — none of that. If you are in America and you get injured or sick, you get treatment.
MedicareForAll is just the name of the program that each of these concepts is called. It is Medicare+ACA 2.0 if you will.
Now that we know what we mean by SinglePayer, MedicareForAll, UniversalCare, let’s figure out how to make it happen. I’ll make a proposal in future letters.
Regards,
Gerard McLean
cc: Sen. Sherrod Brown
67/37
