HEALTH CARE POLICY STATEMENT

By Ted "Crisell" Crisell

Health care, commensurate with the current state of scientific knowledge, should be the fundamental right of each American.

A BOLD STATEMENT? NO! Because all major industrial nations except the United States have universal health care for their citizens.

Our country is a leader of nations in the development and use of scientific technology to save lives and cure illnesses. Yet 45 million Americans do not have access to adequate health care. In wealthy Orange County, more than 450,000 men, women and children do not have adequate health care services, according to every authoritative study.

Social Security, Medicare and MediCal programs for senior's retirement and the poor, are being threatened by spurious attempts to privatize those protective systems for individual profit-making. The drug industry is exploiting Americans with pricing medications 3-5 times higher than in other countries. A World War II wage compromise saddled American industry with costly administration of employee health services programs.

All who do have health insurance, as wealthy individuals or through employers, pay 18-30 percent more because of control paperwork, administrative costs, and excessive profits of the insurance system. The latest cost reduction measure of managed care, principally in health maintenance organizations (HMO's), has reduced the quality as well as access to medical care.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Health problems are a public policy issue, threatening individual lives and our economy! Sound social and economic actions must be taken to develop the highest quality and lowest cost system that can serve all Americans equally, with the following steps:

1. Establish all children eligible for the medical program, starting with immunizations.

2. Legislate price controls on drugs for senior's medicare, based on Canadian and European comparisons.

3. Provide Federal employee's health program eligibility to all Americans.

4. Initiate single-payer national health program for all Americans.

(This policy statement on health care was prepared in-house by the CRISELL CAMPAIGN Health care consultant and policy advisor Chauncey A. Alexander).

WHEN ELECTED TED CRISELL WILL SUPPORT POLICIES THAT PROVIDE THE BEST HEALTH CARE FOR ALL RESIDENTS OF ORANGE COUNTY, WOMEN, CHILDREN AND MEN ----- FOR ALL SENIORS AND FOR ALL FAMILIES.