To the editor:
The U.S. National Health Care Act, or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (HR 676), establishes the United States National Health Care (USNHC) Program to provide all individuals residing in the United States and U.S. territories with free health- care. That includes all medically necessary care.
Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? Until you read the bill.
All residents, including illegal aliens, will receive a card with a unique number in the mail — not an individual’s Social Security number which would prove U.S. citizenship.
And guess who determines residency for eligibility purposes? The Secretary of Health and Human Services, not the Constitution which defines citizenship.
Supporters of universal healthcare state that you will have the freedom to use your own provider. Well, not exactly. No institution may be a “participating provider” unless it is a public or not-for-profit institution.
It’s true private physicians, private clinics and private healthcare providers shall continue to operate as private entities, but they are prohibited from being investor-owned. So what private physician is going to want to have anything to do with this program?
Think you will be able to continue using your current insurance provider? Not according to HR 676. Why? Because it is unlawful for a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this act, which covers just about everything. So you really don’t have any “freedom” to choose your insurance company because it can’t offer anything the government provides; you only have the government program.
And guess who gets to help pay for this wonderful program? HR 676 establishes the USNHC Trust Fund to finance the program with amounts deposited: from existing sources of government revenues for healthcare, by increasing personal income taxes on the top 5 percent income earners, by instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income and by instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions.
HR 676 also transfers and appropriates to carry out this act, amounts that would have been appropriated for federal public health- care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and the state Children’s Health Insurance Program.
But most of all, guess what? HR 676 requires creation of a confidential electronic patient record system so the government — not your doctor — can determine exactly what kind of treatment is best for you, or if you even get treatment!
While Europe has learned the hard lessons of socialized medicine and is reversing its course, America is full-steam ahead. Thanks but no thanks. This is “change” we don’t need in America!
Charlona M. Sawyer
Greenbank
