Some Health Priorities

Saturday morning the Laymen's League at my church, Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, asked me to lead a discussion on health insurance reform. The people there were quite knowledgeable and had convictions about how these matters should be settled. We agreed on a list of priorities, which we put into a letter, signed, and sent to Representative David Price and Senators Kay Hagan and Richard Burr. If you agree with these priorities, why not contact your Congressional representatives, too. Here is a copy of our letter.

Members of the Laymen’s League

Mount Level Missionary Baptist Church

316 Hebron Road

Durham, NC 27704

September 19, 2009

Rep. David Price

411 W. Chapel Hill Street

NC Mutual Building, 9th Floor

Durham, NC 27701

Dear Rep. Price,

Today we met to discuss health insurance reform as part of our Laymen’s League Men’s Breakfast. Many of us are concerned about this issue because of its direct effects on our families. We want to make clear to you what we believe is important to include in any legislation that will set out to reform health insurance and health care access.

1. Everyone should have access to quality health care, regardless of income or age.
2. Young people should be able to continue longer on their parents’ insurance policies.
3. Insurance companies should not be able to exclude pre-existing conditions, drop coverage, deny benefits, and other forms of discrimination against the sick.
4. Insurance coverage should be fully portable regardless of whether a person gets a new job, loses her or his job, retires, or experiences other changes in employment.
5. Medicare should remain strong for senior citizens.
6. There should be caps on out-of-pocket expenses for any person or family, both annually and for a lifetime.No one should have to go bankrupt over health care costs.
7. Large employers should continue to contribute to health insurance costs.
8. Small businesses should have opportunities for the same affordable health insurance plans that large businesses have.
9. There should be prescription drug coverage without gaps.
10. People should be able to keep health insurance they like.
11. People should be able to choose their doctors.
12. Big insurance and health care monopolies should have to face real competition to bring prices down.
13. Health disparities affecting minorities should be addressed.
14. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, glaucoma, high blood pressure, and others should be priorities for affordable treatment.

We would appreciate hearing back from you concerning our priorities. Thank you for your hard work on our behalf.

Sincerely,

Robert Crouch, Chair (signatures on attached page)

Bailout 10: Make Banks Accountable

Today's news reports that the Governor of Illinois has threatened to suspend state business with Bank of America. B of A is the bank which cut off credit to a window and door factory that has announced it will close, leading workers to sit in at the factory to demand the company pay them for accrued time.

Now the Governor of Illinois may in part be trying to distract attention from his other problems, such as being arrested on corruption charges today. However, it is about time leaders make this kind of decision to stand up to the banks which have become beneficiaries of one of the greatest wealth redistributions ever known. Public servants need to serve the public interest. Tax dollars are for the public interest. When tax dollars are provided to a private corporation in order to further the public interest in stabilizing the economy, then those private corporations must be held accountable.

That is why I wrote to my Representative, David Price, today to ask for increased oversight over banks and financial institutions who received "bailout" funds from the Department of the Treasury. The accountability was left too vague, and executives are retaining their expense accounts and euphemistically renamed "bonuses" while autoworkers are being demonized as overpaid for getting middle-class salaries, health care benefits, and retirement. I asked him to demand repayment from banks that refuse to make these funds available to support industry and jobs in the economy. If dramatic change can be demanded of GM, and I am all for that, then it can be demanded of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldmon Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and others.

Get rid of the $10 million Wells Fargo (see Bailout 9 post) severance package for one Wachovia executive and you can pay annual salary and benefits for over 100 of the better paid GM autoworkers who have mortgages to pay and families to support. Okay, let the Wachovia guy have the same amount as an autoworker. Bank of America's bailout money would be much better used if provided directly to struggling industrial producers.