The battle for health-care reform must succeed

There’s an irony in even the way it is referred to: health-care insurance. Because if one is actually healthy, the problems associated with health care in the United States become less onerous. Well, except for paying for it.

With premiums increasing at rates of 15, 20, or even 30 percent annually for years, the cost of health care in this country has become completely unconscionable. Such costs have been crippling companies, organizations and even governmental entities, large and small, that have responsibly tried to provide the best medical benefits they could for their employees. At many companies, the percentages employees have had to kick in themselves have increased as the rates have increased. So, companies struggle to pay higher and higher premiums, often at the expense of reinvestment in their businesses and pay increases for their workers. And those same workers struggle to pay their own share of ever-increasing premiums.

But for those who are sick, especially with long-term ailments that require ongoing care, the system can become impossible to maneuver. Any pre-existing condition often means one becomes ineligible for coverage, refused entry into any plan or even thrown out of the health insurance plan into which one has been paying for years. And for those Americans who are unemployed, or have part-time employment, or employers who have been unable to continue to offer health benefits? They are without any medical insurance, and at a distinct disadvantage if in need of any kind of medical attention.

It is time to change the way health care is delivered in our country. When, as Rep. Chris Murphy (D-5) told Lakeville Journal reporter Patrick Sullivan in an interview last week, health care in the United States is twice as expensive as in any other industrialized nation, it’s time to take some dramatic steps toward the redesign of the system. There has been governmental intervention in the financial industry and in the automobile industry, and it’s time for the government to step in and find a way to bring down the rates on health-care insurance. As Murphy said, all the plans before Congress now, among which the legislators will have to choose when they return from their summer recess, retain employer-sponsored coverage as the basis of the health-care system. But they include accountability for rate levels, creating a structure within which the rates will decrease. “People will keep their private insurance and pay less for it,� Murphy said.

If this can happen, it will be a step in the right direction. This newpaper’s columnist, Anthony Piel, has described in detail in his columns the approach the World Health Organization has taken in providing worldwide medical insurance coverage for its employees (which Piel was at one time.) His recommendations are good ones, and would take the country in a better direction for its medical insurance system. But change often has to happen incrementally, and now is the time, as President Obama has urged. The first step toward positive change for nationwide health-care insurance coverage in the United States in years should be taken by this Congress. There will be debate when legislators return to Washington in September, but one of the plans before them should be chosen and the process of reform should begin.