National Health Insurance

Our health care system is failing. It denies care to many in need and often leaves families - even those with coverage - in financial ruin. Huge administrative costs and profits divert resources from care to bureaucrats and investors. Insurers' dictates and the pressures of competition and profit threaten medicine's most sacred values.

We, the undersigned, endorse a fundamental change in America's health care -the creation of a comprehensive National Health Insurance (NHI) Program. Such a program would cover every American for all necessary medical care. Patients would receive an NHI card entitling them to care at any hospital, doctor's office or clinic, as well as coverage for prescription drugs and supplies. The United States National Health Insurance Act, HR 676, embodies these principles and we urge its passage.

Under NHI, a single, public insurance plan would replace the current patchwork of thousands of private plans. Eliminating the existing complex and redundant insurance bureaucracy and the paperwork burden it inflicts on doctors, nurses and hospitals would generate massive administrative savings. Overall, NHI would save about $350 billion annually on bureaucracy and profits, more than enough to pay for covering the uninsured and improving coverage for the tens of millions who are currently UNDER-insured.

Most hospitals and clinics would remain privately owned and operated, receiving a budget from the NHI to cover all operating costs. The NHI would pay for care in private doctors' offices, as well as in group practices and clinics.

A National Health Insurance Program is the only affordable option for universal, comprehensive coverage. Lesser reforms that retain the private insurance industry cannot streamline bureaucracy; as a result, expanding coverage inevitably means increasing costs, and reducing costs inevitably means limiting coverage. But NHI could both expand coverage and reduce costs. It would squeeze out bureaucratic waste and eliminate the perverse incentives that threaten the quality of care and the ethical foundations of medicine and nursing. For patients, NHI would assure comprehensive coverage and a free choice of doctors and hospitals. For physicians and nurses, NHI would minimize bureaucratic hassles and costs, and nurture the best traditions of these honored professions.

We call on our political leaders to place the needs of the American people above those of the insurance and drug companies that have hitherto blocked real health reform.