Letters and Comments for July 14, 2009

Letters and Comments for July 14, 2009

Need real health care reform

To the Editor:

Congress and President Obama are working on health insurance reform. It is important that they do it right. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies are spending more than a million dollars a day to ensure they get it wrong. They are employing two lobbyists for every member of Congress to prevent consideration of cost-effective reform.

Oregonians can’t stand the health insurance status quo. Twenty percent of middle-income Oregon families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care. Roughly 2.2 million Oregonians get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $13,436 (about the annual earnings of a full-time minimum wage job). Since 2000, average family premiums have increased by 102 percent.

Oregon businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax on premiums of roughly $1,400 per year as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.

Affordable health care is increasingly out of reach. Employer coverage in Oregon declined from 64 percent to 58 percent between 2000 and 2007. High costs block access to care. Thirteen percent of Oregonians report not visiting a doctor because of cost. Seventeen percent of Oregonians are uninsured, and 69 percent of them are in families with at least one full-time worker.

Oregon needs affordable health insurance that is available to everyone. We need a single-payer system that prevents insurance companies from denying insurance to persons who need it most. Real reform requires a single risk-pool with everyone in and nobody out.

Because we believe real reform is essential, we will travel to Washington, D.C., for the July 30 Medicare Birthday Party and Rally in support of full and fair consideration of single-payer health insurance.

We will deliver to our U.S. senators resolutions passed by the Union, Grant and Wallowa County Central Committees of the Democratic Party.

Bill Whitaker and Cheryl Simpson

La Grande