Thank you for contacting me regarding health insurance. It's good to hear from you.
As you know, a lot has been made recently of the benefits of socialized medicine. Critics of the current U.S. system of joint public and private insurance point to Canada or Europe for models of how we ought to run our system. The need is the overwhelming number of 46 million uninsured Americans with no access to healthcare.
Roughly 46 million Americans lack healthcare coverage. However, this number requires a closer examination. According to the 2006 US census data, 250 million Americans either enroll in public health insurance plans such as CHIP or Medicaid or have private coverage. Of the 46 million uninsured, 11.4 million individuals are in families making less than the poverty level and are eligible for public assistance, but have chosen not to enroll. Another 18 million are in their twenties. This younger group tends to be healthier and thus some of these individuals may choose to forgo spending money on insurance in favor of other things. Roughly nine million are in families making over $75,000 a year. Most telling is that of the 46 million, around 21 million will be uninsured for longer than a year.
The scope of the problem is how to insure the group of 8 million individuals who make less than $50,000 a year, but more than their state's threshold to qualify for assistance through Medicaid or similar programs. This can be accomplished through a series of coordinated federal and state initiatives. On the federal level, I have long advocated for the passage of Small Business Health Plan legislation. Such plans would allow small businesses to band together to form a larger insurance pool and negotiate lower rates. With 18 million uninsured working Americans employed by companies with fewer than 25 employees, this legislation would be a big help.
Additionally, we need to work to break down costly insurance mandates. In Montana, the cost of all state and federal mandates is $21.22 per person per month for a typical family of four. Some of these mandates serve legitimate medical concerns, but the overall cost is a burden on middle class families trying to get even minimal coverage.
What we must avoid is being overwhelmed by the complexity of the problem and resort to government run, single-payer healthcare. A quick comparison between Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and the U.S. system shows the problems and inadequacies of government run healthcare. Right now, 1 million Britons are on waiting lists for procedures, and another 100,000 operations are cancelled yearly due to various staff and equipment deficiencies. New technologies offer many advances in the medical field, yet because of its government run structure, the NHS cannot take advantage. For instance, while the U.S. has 13 computed tomography (CAT) scanners per million people, Great Briton has half of that. This results in a wait time of over a month for what in the U.S. is a routine imaging service. The most telling number is that a majority of NHS workers would not want to receive treatment in the system.
America offers the highest quality care in the world. Rest assured that I will work to make sure everyone has access to that care. The U.S. system needs reform. But those changes can be made without relying on bureaucrats to make our healthcare decisions for us. Healthcare should be between a patient and his or her physician, not between a patient, doctor, and a low-level bureaucrat in D.C.
Thanks again for contacting me. For further information or to sign up for my e-newsletter, please visit my website at www.house.gov/rehberg. Keep in touch.
That last sentence strikes me as an invitation.
