In Defense of Healthcare

Forty-seven million Americans go without health insurance. Twenty-five million Americans who do have health insurance go without care due to high costs.

Through out the health care debate, we've heard all of the heart-wrenching stories of old women and dying husbands, burdensome debt on hungry families, and young people dying of preventable diseases.

We've heard about people who slip through the loopholes of health insurance plans and those who cannot afford health insurance or people who are under crushing debt from their plans.

We've even heard about "death panels" and "socialism." We've heard it all, nonfiction and fiction, but I'm not writing this to promote buzz words or make you sob. I'm writing this to promote the cold, hard facts and show why a public option is exactly what this country needs from an economics standpoint.

General Motors spends more funds and resources on providing health care for their employees than they do on materials to make vehicles. Many small businesses cannot provide health care, or provide low quality health care, to their workers because they cannot afford a good health plan.

Factories and jobs are being shipped overseas because of these crushing health care costs. More everyday are opting to set up shop in Canada or overseas to take advantage of a public option. Businesses would rather spend a larger sum of their resources on producing products than paying for health care -- but that's common sense.

Existing health insurance companies spend anywhere from 20 to 50 percent on overhead to keep their companies running. In comparison, Medicare has a very low overhead cost and can focus on spending more resources on the people enrolled in the program.

A public option would be able to provide a higher quality of health coverage at a lower cost. The Lewin Group even stated that premiums would be about 23 percent lower in a public option than with private health care providers.

In closing, health care already consumes more of the national GDP than France, Spain, Switzerland, and Canada, but you may exclaim that we are a much larger country than any of those mentioned. Per capita, the United States is higher than Switzerland by over 1.4 times and higher than Canada by over 1.9 times.

Our health care is more expensive and plagued by giant loopholes. We are seeing companies flee our borders because of the high cost of our health care and taking advantage of foreign public options.

If we are to create jobs in this country, we need health care reform. That reform was passed by Congress and is now still being debated, so I urge you to stand up for jobs, stand up for commonsense, and, most of all, stand up for the people of America. Help protect health care reform.