| U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the
Senate Finance Committee, recently announced, in both Wash., D.C.,
and Helena, that, “For health care the season of incremental
change is coming to an end.” Good for him!
Now, let’s encourage our senator to use his
chairmanship to move the U.S. Congress toward universal insurance
coverage for our health care needs.
Baucus’ statement appears to align him with
those who wisely understand that America’s half century of
an on-again, off-again, stuttering, incremental approach to fixing
the health care insurance mess must be replaced by a broad overhaul
that leads to universal coverage for every American—sooner
rather than later.
President Harry Truman announced his support for universal coverage
fifty-nine years ago and ever since the overly-timid members of
the U.S. Congress have consistently cowered in the face of the nation’s
health care insurance companies and put band aids on a problem that
requires major surgery.
Frankly, the private sector, in league with government,
has created a health care disgrace.
Our major private companies, notably America’s
automobile manufacturers and our once great steel producers, to
mention only two, are either bankrupt or near it—in large
part due to the exorbitant cost of health insurance.
Our nation's infant mortality rate has been higher
than Singapore’s, the Cubans have a longer life expectancy,
our inner-city hospitals and their doctors and nurses are in crises,
our rural hospitals have too little money and too few beds. In short,
we face a first-class mess.
Since 2000, the most basic health care costs have
increased at a rate five times faster than that of wages, giving
us the most expensive health care of any nation.
Billions of unnecessary dollars are paid every year
by Americans to a system that is strangling on its own red tape
while 45 million Americans, including more than 150,000 Montanans,
have no health care insurance coverage.
We pay through the nose for ineffective insurance
coverage, and all the while our members of Congress and our president
mouth platitudes about fixing the problems.
However, history demonstrates that all they have done
is to occasionally patch the most noticeable leaks that spring up,
using gimmicks such as tax breaks, encouraging small businesses
to pool coverage, and hoping that states or the private sector will
magically fix the problem.
Universal coverage is not a matter of political left
or right, rather it is about right or wrong. We Americans have the
compassion and the desire to correct the problem and 70% of us support
health care coverage for everyone. What we haven’t had are
enough members of Congress with either the courage or capabilities
to get the job done.
Sen. Baucus is now in a position to break the stalemate
and move toward universal coverage. His counterpart in the U.S.
House is the informed and effective Chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.
Perhaps Max and Charlie, both of whom I was glad to
count as friends during my years in the Congress, will form an unusual
alliance—an axis between Montana and Harlem that moves America
toward the economic and moral imperative of health care for all.
Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Representative
from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to Montana and is
teaching at The University of Montana where he also serves
as a Senior Fellow at the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain
West.
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