DRAFT
Target Action Plan #4
4. Provide a Security Network Including Supplement Incomes Up to a Minimum Living Wage for a Decent Life for All
(Updated May 18, 2016)
(This is a work in progress. Please provide comments/suggestions/additional actions to PeopleNow.org by email: refinetheplan@peoplenow.org or Fax 703-521-0849)
The purpose of this plan is for the People to work with healthcare personnel and progressive legislators and public and private sector officials and their staffs to implement comprehensive, single payer Medicare for all and double Social Security and SSI Payments as rapidly as possible.
The objectives of this plan are to work with others to:
• Provide comprehensive healthcare
for all
as rapidly as possible.
• Immediately provide funds to hospitals and clinics to treat those who need but cannot afford healthcare
• Refine the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act, H.R. 676
• Enact legislation to Replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 with the refined H.R. 676 Legislation.
•
• Double social security payments and SSI payments for all as rapidly as possible
• Ensure Medicare, Social Security and SSI are adequately financed indefinitely
• Accomplish this plan with personnel “transfers” in the public and private sectors and no involuntary layoffs
This Plan is part of and should be accomplished in close coordination with the Universal Movement and Strategic Plan for a Permanently Peaceful, Prosperous, Just, Sustainable World described on www.PeopleNow.org. The Movement and Strategic plan provides:
• Funding sources
• Employment opportunities for those displaced by this plan
• Honest legislators to enact the right laws
• Honest officials to implement the program
• Factual information and education program
• All other items needed to implement comprehensive, single payer Medicare for all
Universal Movement and Global Strategic Plan for a Permanently Peaceful, Prosperous, Just, Sustainable World described at www.PeopleNow.org
PUBLIC SERVANTS WORKING WITH THE PEOPLE AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR SHALL IN THE MOST HUMANE, EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT WAYS POSSIBLE:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
4.4.1 Enact emergency legislation
4.4.3 Rewrite/Refine the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R.676)
4.4.5 Double all Social Security and SSI Payments
This plan outlines Individual Actions to
The objectives of this plan include:
4.4.1 Enact emergency legislation to immediately provide directions and funds:
4.4.1.1 To hospitals and clinics to treat those who need but cannot afford healthcare.
4.4.1.2 To the appropriate agencies and NGOs to address serious healthcare challenges including obesity, diabetes, asthma, malnutrition, the considerable number of cases of preventable diseases and highly infectious diseases such as Ebola
These funds to be disbursed and replenished from the government using the refinements outlined in Paragraphs B. 1., 2., and 3., below.
4.4.2 Develop a proposed list of refinements to the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R.676) by marking up the below list of proposed refinements, most of which are probably being used or tried out somewhere in the world.
4.4.2.1 Study and implement best practices and lessons learned from health care systems in the military, current Medicare/Medicaid, the TriCare program for active duty personnel the TriCare for Life program for military retires and in other countries.
4.4.2.2 Rather than billing separately for each appointment, examination and treatment pay living wages/salaries, (depending on their skills, qualifications, work habits and longevity) to doctors, dentists, nurses, nurses aids, interns, radiologist, anesthesiologists, pathologist, digital health record keepers, staff personnel, other healthcare professionals and all care-givers including family and friends who are taking care of the disabled, mentally retarded, elderly and anyone needing long term or hospice care,
4.4.2.3 Use time and material type grants, contracts and sub-contracts with no profits, overhead or fees and no reason for financial personnel to know the names or have access to the medical records of patients.
4.4.2.4 Eliminate multiple billings for individual patients. (Currently doctors, radiologist, anesthesiologists, pathologist, etc. bill separately for operations in many hospitals.) All health care workers should be full or part time employees of hospitals or clinics and work as members of a team as much as practicable. Each patient should be able to communicate with certain members of the team taking care of him/her.
4.4.2.5 Entire Government, including DOD, VA, Medicare, Medicaid, Public Heath Service, Public Hospitals and clinics jointly negotiate prices of volume sales of prescription drugs, over the counter drugs, bandages, durable medical equipment, tools, equipment and essentially all other items and supplies used in hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices.
4.4.2.6 Use the latest technologies for example Tele-medicine, remote sensors, chatting over skype or video conferencing,
4.4.2.7 Set up a system similar to a public library to check out/in durable medical equipment (DME) including crutches, wheel chairs, walkers, blood pressure monitors, thermometers, hospital beds for home use and rollators.
4.4.2.8 Develop and employ universal, standard, comprehensive, private, secure, digitized, health records to be used throughout the public and private sector. These records must use relational data bases with compartmented data that allows the information to be used for such things as data for actuarial and cost study purposes without divulging the identity of the patient/individual
4.4.2.9 Build approximately 1000 new modern hospitals and clinics, equipped with the latest technologies purchased at negotiated prices for volume sales.
4.4.2.10 Reward individuals who practice preventative medicine, don’t smoke, eat properly, exercise and/or control their weight, blood pressure and cholesterol, etc by appropriately increasing their projected Social Security retirement and/or survivors benefits and/or making these funds available in their “estates” to be willed as they see fit.
4.4.2.11 As appropriate make city, county, state and federal hospitals/clinics and community health centers) into government owned and operated or government owned, not for profit contractor operated (GOCO) Medicare/Medicaid, hospitals/clinics that educate, train and qualify doctors, nurses, dentists, nurses aids and other health care personnel, This should have been done with Walter Reed Army hospital which was wrongfully closed.
4.4.2.12 Pay all family and friend care-givers who are taking care of disabled, mentally retarded , elderly needing long term care and hospice care.
4.4.2.13 Forbid government funds, including medicaid and medicare, being used to buy health insurance from private companies.
4.4.2.14 Cease forcing individuals to buy health insurance from for profit companies.
4.4.2.15 Make the military retirees “Tricare for Life” program (Medicare first payer and DOD second payer) into Medicare single payer.
4.4.3 Rewrite/Refine the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R.676) using agreed to refinements from the list in Paragraph B. above
4.4.4 Enact legislation to Repeal the Affordable Care Act and the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and replace them with the refined Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R. 676)
4.4.5 Double all Social Security and SSI Payments
According to Stephen Hill Article “Don't Cut Social Security -- Double It”, in the December, 12 2012 issue of The Atlantic, Social Security should be strengthen by:
4.4.5.1 Doubling Social Security payments to make up for very inadequate, failing pensions and losses in personal savings from the $8 trillion loss in the value of homes during the economic crash and failing pension systems overseen by the same Wall Street bankers and financial managers who drove the U.S. economy off the cliff.
4.4.5.2 Allowing workers to contribute to their own social security retirement pension
4.4.5.3 Lift Social Security's payroll cap that favors the wealthy -- Making all income levels pay the same percentage
John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics states “that much of the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is biased and manipulated and runs counter to personal and business experiences”.
The official Bureau official consumer year to year CPI inflation rate used to calculate Social Security payments is about 2% compared to an actual inflation rate of almost 10% as shown in the below Chart. The Administration does this to keep Social security payments low. These differences began in 1993 are cumulative and amount to a total loss of over half of social security payments
Courtesy of www.ShadowStats.com
Also private social security investment accounts should not be set up and stock market investments from individual social security accounts banned:
Attachment A to the Plan to Provide Both Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act (H.R. 676) and Double Social Security Payments for All
Reasons the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R.676)
Should be Refined and Enacted into Law
• The Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not cover nearly everyone, is unaffordable, over 2000 pages long, complex, unfair to taxpayers and essentially unworkable
• It continues the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which prohibits the Government negotiating prices of prescription drugs and costs taxpayers 40 to 50 billion dollars annually for nothing except unjust enrichments for pharmaceutical companies
• It was written primarily by the health care and pharmaceutical corporation executives and lobbyist and it will channel billions of taxpayers' dollars to these corporations
• Many legislators that voted on the ACA have received and will receive campaign contributions and other things of value from these companies.
• It will apparently increase already high premium prices, deductibles and co-pays by 30% to 40%.
• Taxpayers will pay 75% of the premiums for the legislators that caused the shutdown and all other government employees health care insurance and enable them to choose plans with zero or very low co-pays and deductions
• Under ACA an additional 6.4 million people would be without healthcare due to 26 state governments rejecting the “Medicaid expansion” feature of ACA
• It does not provide reproductive health access for many women
• Patient information is not well protected from hackers and identityIt creates an incentive for employers to keep employees' work hours below 30 hours a week
• Is not coordinated with other major health care systems -- Medicare, Medicaid, the Public Health Service, the Veterans Administration Health Care, and DOD's active duty and retiree health care systems, TriCare and Tricare for Life.
• H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act is far superior to ACA
• According to an article Europe's Quiet Revolution by Steven Hill, published by RootsAction on August 15, 2011:
• European nations are rated by the World Health Organization as having the best health care systems in the world, .... they spend only about half the amount (per capita) as the United States, which has a for-profit system, to provide universal coverage, even as 47 million Americans, many of them children, don't have any health care except a hospital emergency room. Despite spending far more money, U.S. health care is ranked 37th in the world -- just ahead of Cuba and Kuwait. Even European nations like Croatia, with far less wealth than America, provide health care for all, truly a damning indictment of the American for-profit system.
• Switching to the Expanded and Improved Single Payer Medicare System would according to the report, Single Payer Medicare for All, would:
• Create 2,613,495 million new permanent, good-paying jobs
• Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
• Add $100 billion in employee compensation
• Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues
• Repealing the ACA and enacting the refined, expanded and improved Medicare for All Act will resolve all the above problems, provide much needed comprehensive healthcare and save thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars annually.