We must help reform the health care system
The number of uninsured is at an all-time high and growing. Today, there are 47 million Americans without any health insurance — a number that will become 56 million over the next five years if nothing is changed. Health care costs are rising and will continue to rise. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated this year that unless health reforms are enacted, total U. S. health care spending will rise to 20 percent of GDP, compared with 16 percent now.
It is estimated that by 2016, our spending will be more than $4 trillion.
Although we spend more money than any other country, we’re not healthier for it; we do not receive better care or enjoy improved outcomes. A Commonwealth Fund survey of primary care physicians and patients in five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — found that the U. S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five key dimensions of a high-performance health system. Those dimensions are quality, access, efficiency, equity and healthy lives.
Much of this is due to the fact that 47 million Americans have no health care coverage at all.
What do these numbers mean in the real world? We see them every day at Mount St. Mary’s Hospital. Providing health care services, while critical, is only treating the symptoms. The bottom line is that we must work together to create a system where everyone has access to health care. To achieve this goal and cure the disease of a broken health care system, we must look at policy.
On the national front and in our local communities, we must advocate for change and create opportunities for collaboration so that together we can help solve our nation’s health care crisis. In this campaign year, political candidates will offer numerous reform proposals. As you listen to each, we encourage you to evaluate each and to ask these very simple questions:
• Will the health care system be redesigned so that I can easily get clinically excellent health care?
• Will anyone be left behind?
• Is my coverage decent?
• Are the vulnerable covered?
• Can I get health insurance? Can I afford my plan?
• Will my plan be there tomorrow?
The odds of real reform are better now than they have been in decades — if we push hard and build a momentum for change. We must be vocal on this issue, making elected officials take notice and address these questions. We must agree that 100 percent access and 100 percent coverage is the only acceptable outcome, and we must not compromise. It is rare that we have an opportunity to do so much good, for so many people, in so many different ways. We owe it to ourselves to take it.
Judith A. Maness, president and chief executive officer of Mount St. Mary’s Hospital and Health Center
Lewiston
