How much healthcare can you afford? by Peter Moss American healthcare is known worldwide as the best. The only question about it is: How much healthcare can you afford? I would like to see American medicine not only the best but also the most affordable. This is not only to help everybody enjoy life to the fullest but also to relieve us from the worry of catastrophic medical emergencies and the choice of food v. medicine and rent vs. medicine so many indigents now face needlessly. I oppose government healthcare except for the military and vets. But I favor government financing of all healthcare, military and civilian. If elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, I will introduce a bill to provide Universal Medicare ABC to be known as UMA. It will extend Medicare to all nonsmoking Americans birth-to-death as an inalienable right and include: [A] hospital [B] medical and surgical and [C] comprehensive: at-home recovery, blood, clinical labs, dental, euthanasia/assisted suicide, experimental surgery and therapy, eyewear, family planning (parental notification under age 16), foreign travel medical emergencies, funeral expenses (lesser of cost or $5,000), hospice care, medical marijuana, nursing home care, optical, organ transplant, prescription drugs, preventive care, prosthesis sexual dysfunction therapy, substance withdrawal, and additional new services as they develop. To be financed by paying into UMA: Medicare payroll taxes; current federal payments to Medicare and Medicaid; employers' contributions to private health insurance; states' share of Medicaid; private insurers' profit executive pay and administrative waste estimated over $300 billion; and a progressive Meditax on family income above $150, 000 per year, to make up any shortfall without deductibles or copays. Patients to have discretion to select doctors, hospitals, and specialists. Only U.S. persons (citizens and Permanent residents) to be covered. Temporary visitors and students to be covered for emergency medicine only. Smokers to be excluded until they have been medically monitored smoke-free over 3 years. Persons opposed to UMA on philosophical or ideological grounds can renounce coverage every five years in writing but will still be liable for Meditax. Persons slandering Universal Medicare as socialism are to be denied benefits for five years from publishing the slander because they shouldn't have it both ways and slander is a cause of action, not free speech. Drug companies making excess profits, i.e. more than cost (including a research cost allocation) plus a fair return on investment, to be prosecuted in class actions for unjust enrichment and fined in effective deterrent amount and collections to be refunded to overcharge victims based on pharmacy and other records. Drug prices to be calculated and set by the U.S. General Accounting Office, and appealable to the National Assembly of Indigent Patients. The progressive Meditax on the $150K+ crowd will effectively counter-balance aggressive drug pricing and promotion by the talk-to-your-doctor promoters of all little purple pills. It will also provide economic justice based on competitive free enterprise but not socialized medicine. Current non-executive staff of private health insurers to become U.S. civil service as their employers fold. Last but not least, doctors that have refused Medicare patients lately are not likely to do so when their alternative is to move to Canada or to specialize in diseases of the rich. Notwithstanding Jefferson's opinion centuries ago, most people now know that the least government is the worst government. More Americans will support fed financing, (but not healthcare itself) than federalizing air transport security, because more people need health care than air transport and need it more urgently. A better world is possible and it can be legislated. FfxNews,pub.7-1-02