10 EXCELLENT REASONS FOR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

Praise for 20 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care

This book is the user's manual for those who will play an integral role in reversing the downward trends in the quality, access, and affordability of health care. In 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care, some of the most notable leaders of this movement make it clear why support for H.R. 676 is ballooning all across the nation. -- U.S. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich

Here is a lit stick of dynamite tossed into a discussion where explosives are desperately needed. There are far more than 10 excellent reasons why millions of Americans desperately need this book. It should become to the struggle to obtain universal national health care in the U.S. what Uncle Tom's Cabin, was to the abolition movement. -- Dave Marsh, activist, critic, and author

The evidence that our current health system is in deep trouble and not viable continues to mount. Whether we examine access, cost, or quality in our system, we are in serious trouble. 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care is a clear, concise, and science-based analysis of the logic and benefits of national health care. -- David Satcher, MD, PhD, and 16th U.S. Surgeon General

Good things come in small packages -- and 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care is a powerful testimony on how to cure our health care woes. Buy one copy, buy many, and spread the word. -- Elaine Bernard, executive director, labor & Worklife Program, Harvard law School

This book addresses all questions about health care reform. Medicare for all is a right worth fighting for! -- Byllye Avery, founder, Avery Institute for Social Change

This little book does a great job of describing our embarrassing U.S. health care system that spends more money per capita on health care than any other country in the world and yet leaves 47 million people uninsured. It also points to a solution. -- Dr. Allan Rosenfield, Dean Emeritus, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

The contributors to this highly readable book provide compelling reasons why the U.S. needs a national health care system similar to the ones that serve every industrialized country but ours at far less cost. Replacing our dysfunctional profit- making health insurance system with a universal-coverage single-payer system like Medicare will permit access to good medical care for all of us. -- Victor W. Sidel, MD, Professor of Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and past president of the American Public Health Association

Any worthwhile reform of our medical care system must include some type of "single-payer" insurance plan. This very readable collection of essays explains why. I recommend it highly. -- Arnold S. Reiman, MD, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and author of A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care

Foreword

Representative John Conyers Jr.

America faces a health care crisis that must be addressed now by Congress and the president. With 47 million uninsured Americans and another 50 million who are underinsured, it is past time to change our fragmented, inefficient, and costly nonsystem of health care.

This insightful book will provide you with the information you need to be an informed participant in the public debate about how to achieve health care for all. This information is especially important now, during this election year. Every candidate is talking about health care. Some are placing the blame for the health care crisis on the American people, arguing that our lifestyle and behavior are to blame for rising health care costs. Some would like to see the burden of rapidly escalating health care costs shifted away from employers and onto working Americans. Nearly all promote plans that will never get our health care costs under control or guarantee all of us the health care we need, because these plans maintain the central role of the wasteful for-profit insurance companies.

Conservative health care reformers talk about maintaining "choice" in the American health care system. The truth is, most Americans have very little choice in health care today. If they can't afford insurance coverage, their choices are limited to paying for needed health care versus paying for other priorities like rent or groceries -- always with the specter of debt or bankruptcy on the horizon. If they are very lucky, their employer may offer them a choice among a few insurance plans. However, among the shrinking number of Americans who still have employer-provided coverage, most only have the choice of accepting the insurance plan their employer offers or going without coverage. Once insured, choices are limited to whatever the insurance company wants to cover, consistent with its bottom line.

True universal health care means that all of us will have the choice of doctor, hospital, or caregiver, not merely a choice among insurance plans. And we will never have to choose between paying for health care and risking bankruptcy versus going without care. That's the goal of HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. This uniquely American health insurance program with single-payer financing will ensure that everyone in this country, regardless of income, employment, race, or health status, has access to the highest-quality and most-cost-effective health care services. The bill would establish a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system that improves and expands the  already existing Medicare program.

Within the chapters of this book and in the resource guide at the back, you will find cutting-edge information to help you work toward the only sensible solution to our health care crisis: a single-payer national health insurance program. Contributors to this book include doctors, nurses, patients, and an international union leader. They explain why health care is a human right. They discuss the benefits of a single-payer plan: that it is cost- effective; will provide choice, quality, and better health for Americans; will help to reduce health care disparities; will make doctors and nurses better able to do their jobs; and will benefit both workers and businesses. They will also explain why single-payer universal health care is the only approach that can guarantee Americans the health care they need when they need it and explain how, by working together, we can achieve the goal of health care for all.

I urge you to read this groundbreaking book and to get involved in the growing movement for single-payer health care!

John Conyers Jr.
Member of Congress
February 2008

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Notes:

Representative John Conyers Jr. is a 43-year member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary and the primary author of HR676, The United States Health Insurance Act.

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