Health Care

I don't know about other parts of the country, but health insurance rates here have skyrocketed over the past five years. A comprehensive family plan would cost more than a year's wages for someone earning $8 per hour. Fortunately there are a lot of health care plans offered by the state for those who can't afford health care on their own.

Still, we're not far from seeing some sort of national health care plan. Note the following article from The Progress Report published by The Center For American Progress.

HEALTH CARE--CITIZEN'S WORKING GROUP CALLS FOR UNIVERSAL
COVERAGE:

A report released by the Citizens Healthcare Working Group on Monday finds "overwhelming support for a [health care] plan that covers all Americans." The report is based on a series of 84 meetings, organized in conjunction with community organizations across the country, where the committee heard from over 6,500 people. The committee also received 14,000 responses to an Internet poll solicited for the study. Citing spiraling costs, decreasing efficiency, and rising numbers of uninsured, the Working Group asserts that "Americans should have a health care system in which everyone participates, regardless of their financial resources or health status, with...access to appropriate high-quality care without endangering individual or family financial security." The group demands this policy be "established immediately and implemented by 2012." The group also calls for financial protection against high health care costs, fostering of integrated community health care networks, and a "non-partisan public/private group, staffed by experts, to define America's core benefits and services and update them on an ongoing basis." The Working Group was established as a part of the 2003 Prescription Drug Bill. Its membership includes Health
and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and 14 other representatives from consumer and disabilities groups, business leaders, organized labor, and health care providers.