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Have you heard of H. Res. 676? No? Neither had I. H.R. 676 is a bill for Comprehensive Health Insurance Coverage for All United States Residents. This bill was introduced by John Conyers and has a whopping 91 co-sponsors. This bill offers:

Every citizen of the US will be covered from birth to death.

No more pre-existing conditions to be excluded from coverage.

No more expensive deductibles or co-pays.

All prescription medications will be covered.

All dental and eye care will be included.

Mental health and substance abuse care will be fully covered.

Long term and nursing home services will be included.

You will always choose your own doctors and hospitals.

Costs of coverage will be assessed on a sliding scale basis.

Tremendously simplified system of medical administration

Total portability – your coverage not tied to any job or location.

Existing Medicare benefits for those over 65 will remain the same or be vastly improved in many cases.

Let’s reiterate a couple of points: You can go to any licensed health care clinician anywhere in the United States that is legally qualified to provide the benefits. There are no deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing shall be imposed with respect to covered benefits. You get government administrated coverage at any doctor you choose (if they participate, which almost every one of them will because that will be their baseline bread and butter) and the doctors get paid directly from the government.

Sounds good so far, but it can’t cover much of anything, right? From the bill, this is what is covered. The health insurance benefits under this Act cover all medically necessary services, including at least the following:

Primary care and prevention. Inpatient care. Outpatient care. Emergency care. Prescription drugs. Durable medical equipment. Long term care. Mental health services. The full scope of dental services (other than cosmetic dentistry). Substance abuse treatment services. Chiropractic services. Basic vision care and vision correction (other than laser vision correction for cosmetic purposes).

From what I can tell, this covers all healthcare (including eyesight and dental) unless it is deemed cosmetic or otherwise deemed medically unnecessary. For cosmetic (or other) proceedures deemed not medically necessary, one can purchase private healthcare insurance. Other than that, private healthcare insurance, should you opt into the national health care program laid out in HR 676, is neither needed nor allowed (no double dipping. You cannot get coverage with direct payments to the provider and then get reimbursed by a private insurance company).

All providers, physicians, dentists, doctors of osteopathy, psychologists, chiropractors, doctors of optometry, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physicians’ assistants, and other advanced practice clinicians as licensed and regulated by the States will have three options for how they get paid:

Fee for service payment Salaried positions in institutions receiving global budgets Salaried positions within group practices or non-profit health maintenance organizations receiving capitation payments

This gives providers choices, as well as the public. It also mandates that providers submit a simple bill (written or by computer). If payments are not made to providers within 30 days, interest must be paid to those providers.

This also covers funding as well as definitions of operational and capital expenditures. Capital expenditures include facility construction and/or improvement, and the purchasing of equipment. Conversion to a not-for-profit system will occur over a 15 year period and funding will come from the sale of U. S. Treasury Bonds.

Sounds too good to be true. There HAS to be drawbacks, right? While I don’t think the bill is perfect, the only thing that looks like it MIGHT be a problem is that there is no mandatory opt in for various providers which means that you may wind up with some who only accept private insurance – or cash payments. Of course, 99% of providers and hospitals will opt-in due to the sheer number of available patients, just as most used to for Medicare and Medicaid (before Bush started messing around with paying those providers). So, the possible downside is that the Have’s may still have the best healthcare because they can write a check to any doctor or facility for $500,000 to pay for their own heart surgery. There is no way to get around that. Money has and always will be king.

Overall, I think the bill is good. Read the full text of the bill for yourself here (in .PDF).

How it will be funded and transitioned is laid out in the bill. Should you be concerned about where the money will come from and how the government will pay for it, think of this:

How much do you pay weekly, bi-weekly or monthly now?

How much does your employer kick in (if you are lucky enough to have one who does)?

How much do you pay monthly in co-payments for visits, procedures and medicine?

Now multiply that by every person paying into private health care insurance in this country.

Then add in the many millions each executive makes in bonuses – that come from your premiums!

Subtract how many doctors have had to hire people to deal with the insurance companies who constantly delay and refuse treatment.

Add in a government entity which can negotiate costs (so that everyone wins, you, your doctor or other provider, etc.)

And you have a very equable system with private doctors giving you what they do best: Health Care!

While I doubt that we will have any changes at all under Bush and his boot-licking Republican pocket pals, we might actually have a chance after November. Let’s prepare to take advantage of that.

So, what can you do? Get involved! From DailyKos:

Ask your congressperson to sign-up as a co-sponsor of HR-676! You can write a letter directly via this site. You can look-up your elected officials here.

Get any organization you belong to — civic, religious, labor, community, etc. to pass an HR-676 endorsement resolution: Here is how to do that via Physicians for a National Health Program. Or here if you prefer via a non-physician group.

On the DailyKos page (about half-way down the page) there are links to several organizations, local, state and national. Another interesting diary to read on DailyKos is here. This is something that affect every US citizen. We should all be demanding that every American citizen has quality health care. We must take profits out of the mix. When health care CEO’s walk away annually with millions in bonuses, that is OUR money – money we give them so that they can delay and deny coverage.

Psssssst…..do something!

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