Fwd: qotd: Don’t forget New York

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: qotd: Don't forget New York
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2013 10:44:46 -0800
From: Don McCanne <don@mccanne.org>
To: Quote-of-the-Day <quote-of-the-day@mccanne.org>



The New York Times
December 23, 2013
Single Payer for New York

To the Editor:

Re "Under Health Law, Independent Practitioners in City Face Canceled
Policies" (news article, Dec. 14):

The Affordable Care Act makes important repairs to our broken health
care system. The problem is that it leaves insurance companies in charge
— with high premiums, high deductibles and co-pays; too much control
over which doctors or hospitals we can go to and what care they can
provide; and high administrative costs.

The exchanges are complicated because the system requires means-testing
to see who is eligible for Medicaid or subsidies, and then requires
people to select from multiple plans.

We could cover everyone, provide better coverage and save billions
through publicly sponsored, single-payer health coverage, like an
improved version of Medicare for everyone — and no insurance companies.

Washington might not be ready to act, but individual states have long
been the "laboratories of democracy." New York can do better.

Richard N. Gottfried
New York, Dec. 14, 2013

(The writer, chairman of the New York State Assembly Health Committee,
is the author of a bill in the New York Legislature to establish a state
single-payer health plan.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/opinion/single-payer-for-new-york.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

A.5389/S.2078, New York Health - an act to establish a single payer
health program:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?sh=printbill&bn=A05389&term=2013


Comment: As the Affordable Care Act unfolds it becomes all too obvious
that the repairs in our system of financing health care are falling far
too short of the goals of universality, affordability, administrative
simplicity, and accessibility with free choice of hospitals and health
care professionals. Clearly we need a single payer system that would
easily achieve these goals. New York, with the leadership of Assemblyman
Richard Gottfried, has joined other states in attempting to enact a
state-based single payer system.

What we desperately need is a federal government that partners with
states - all states - in enacting legislation that will bring single
payer to all of us. With the surge in a renewed interest in single
payer, we need grassroots and coalition efforts to be sure that people
understand the single payer approach and then will demand it when they
go to vote. Let's pull out all stops between now and next November.