Reform Can Have Something for Everyone July 11, 2009

Miami Herald Op-Ed Article Written By President Martha Baker

As a registered nurse who has spent more than 25 years working at one of the largest public hospitals in the country, I know that our community is fortunate to have Jackson Memorial Hospital at the core of its healthcare-delivery system. I am proud that we provide the highest quality care to anyone who needs it, no matter whether they can pay.

Our system -- which brings the uninsured to our emergency-room doors at the point when they must receive the most expensive form of care at the most advanced stages of illness -- is broken. Our patients who can pay end up paying more than they can afford because an easily treatable condition has escalated to a crisis. More than the financial care, the suffering of patients and the risk of mortality or permanent disability increases when chronic conditions are allowed to develop untreated.

The Affordable Health Choices Act, introduced recently by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a longtime champion of healthcare expansion, promises to be a prescription for healing our dysfunctional system.

The bill provides that "all Americans should have the same kinds of meaningful choices of health benefit plans that members of Congress as federal employees, enjoy through the federal employees health benefits program."

Today's health system, which leaves more than 47 million Americans -- more than 600,000 of them in South Florida -- with no healthcare coverage at all, drastically distorts the entire system and adds enormously to the cost of healthcare for everyone else. As the costs in the system rise, more people are pushed into the ranks of the uninsured, which forces them to go without the primary care that in most cases would keep them healthy.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to be covered by insurance plans still know they can be expensive, complicated and loaded with trap doors. A recent report by the American Medical Association has documented that fully 60 percent of Americans who declare bankruptcy are forced to do so by healthcare costs. A public health-insurance plan is necessary to ensure adequate coverage, foster choice and competition and bring down costs. Ordinary Americans will need to be just as involved as the profiteers.

Fortunately there is a way out of this vicious cycle. With a healthcare-reform package that ensures affordable coverage, includes a strong public health-insurance option and requires employers to share in the responsibility of covering workers, we can avoid an even more disastrous future.

The Kennedy bill is the opening salvo in what promises to be a lively debate on how to achieve reform. We know the lobbyists who profit from the broken system will be doing their best to limit change.

If Jackson and all the other safety nets that underpin our system are to have a future, and ordinary Americans are to have any relief from skyrocketing costs, we will need to be just as involved as the profiteers.

Now is the time to get healthcare reform right and actually produce workable choices for all, including a public health-insurance option. The Kennedy bill is a good start.

Martha Baker, RN, is a registered nurse in the Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the president the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1991.