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MAILBAG: Health care system needs major reform
By Bob Johnson, Sauk City
• Most of those bankrupted by medical problems had health insurance. More than three-quarters (77.9 percent) were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness.
• Most of the medically bankrupt fell into income categories that the authors of the study identify as
"solidly middle class before financial disaster hit." Two-thirds were homeowners, and three-fifths had gone to college.
I hope that when you are talking to your friends and neighbors you can use this information to win the argument that the United States needs to make major changes in it’s health care system.
President Obama needs our help to get major reform done. Call your representatives and let them know what you want: Rep. Baldwin, (202) 225-2906; Rep. Kind, (202) 225-5506; Sen. Feingold, (202) 224-5323; Sen. Kohl, 202) 224-5653.
Sixty years of market place style health care coverage has put us in the situation we are in now. Whatever we want to call it, government based, single payer, public plan, there has to be something done to put pressure on the for-profit insurance companies or we will be stuck with another decade of "more of the same."
Who and when was it decided that health care in the United States had to be for profit? Why do people have to die because they are too poor to pay for care? Why do people have to become bankrupt because they got sick?
• In a substantial number of instances, high medical bills coincided with a loss of income as illness forced breadwinners to lose time from work. Often illness led to job loss, and with it the loss of health insurance.
The health care debate: These findings come from a a study that will be published this summer by the "American Journal of Medicine."
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