Last week I provide some early information on the proposed cellular phone service to our friends in Whitewater. The company that is currently installing antennas on the water tower is Crossroads Wireless (http://www.crossroads.us/web/guest/4), toll free 1-877-366-4968. This Oklahoma based company will partner with Sprint to provide roaming access for cell phone users.
According to my sources at AT&T they are also looking into providing a cell site in Whitewater in their 2009 budget plans. If all goes according to the plan, they could be providing cellular service in Whitewater in 12-18 months and they will work with the residents in the community to determine what options are available to locate an AT&T cell site in town. This is a great example of persistence and continual coaxing of companies to see good things happen.
I have access to regularly published policy papers and briefs from The Flint Hills Center For Public Policy. They can be reached at www.flinthills.org, or 250 N. Water, Suite 216, Wichita, KS. 67202-1215. (1-316-634-0218).
This organization is a think tank that was created as an independent voice to help political decision makers make informed choices. The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan policy group. While they are not involved in the implementation or administration of government policy, their goal is to inform and raise public awareness of policy issues. I want you to be informed as well.
This part 1 of a 3-part article on our health care system.
An article of special interest arrived today titled, “Cost Controls: The Consumer Driven Cure for the Ailing Health Care System”.
The paper centers on how consumer-driven health reforms are the only sustainable way to reduce health care costs while also empowering the individual to control their own health care. The consumer-driven health care will create a true marketplace for insurance, reform the current system through tax deduction and other mechanisms and truly create a market for health care rather than the politicized and inefficient private and public system we have today.
Consumer –driven reforms will provide a health care market, which does not currently exist, while reforming the health care pricing system and empowering individuals to control their own health care spending. Consumer driven reforms represent the best solution to the health care crisis and the best chance to do something about costs and the uninsured before it is too late.
Health care costs continue to rise in America. Spending on health care as of 2007 represents 16 percent of the entire GDP of the US. If the current trends continue, health care would account or 49 percent of the GDP by 2082. Current spending is not sustainable and, at the government level will continue to crowd out spending on education, transportation, COLA, law enforcement and other needs.
Advocates of consumer-driven health care have long argued that access will be increased if you find some way to lower costs for coverage. For a large part of the uninsured population--the 18-34 year olds known as the “indestructables” who insurance companies want in the insurance pool-cost is the main factor keeping them out of the insurance market. Why should they pay to subsidize someone else’s care when they are not sick?
In Kansas, like the rest of the nation, the struggle over health care reform is between those who favor increasing access to insurance coverage through increased state spending and government programs and those who want to expand the private consumer-driven market for insurance. The recent legislative session illustrated the problem of passing government-backed health care reform without significant increases in taxes or cuts in other state programs.
The Kansas Health Policy Authority proposed 21 reforms and while few were enacted, the major reforms, which would have necessitated increased taxes, were not implemented by the legislature. Even the programs which were passed were not funded; the state lacks the money to pay for such increased measures and the coming years look no better for state budgets.
Our modern health care system, embodying a combination of private insurance and government insurance, dates back to WW 2 and the debates over how to sustain economic growth in the postwar era. Whose job was it to provide health care for employees? Was it the state’s role, or the individual’s?
During the Great Depression of the 1930’s the federal government assumed control over the direction of the economy like never before in American history. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal focused on economic recovery and promoting programs designed to fix a broken capitalist order: they pushed relief for suffering individuals who lost their jobs and homes; finally, the New Deal offered reforms, some of which, like the Social Security Act (1935) reflected the need for social insurance for the elderly during retirement. What the New Deal did not offer was the type of cradle-to-grave security some reformers sought, which would have included national health insurance.
During WW2 employers fashioned a system of private insurance for their employees, in part due to the fact that the wartime wage and price controls through the office of Price Administration (OPA) did not allow businesses to pay more in wages.
Businesses started to offer health care benefits through private insurance companies in order to attract and keep employees.
The employers received a tax benefit from the federal government for the offer of private insurance; the employee received health care coverage in a manner the great majority of Americans still do, through employer-sponsored insurance (ESI).
Next week, “Postwar Struggles, Economic Growth, Inflation and Mandates”.
I consider it an honor and privilege to be your representative in Topeka and want to know what you think. You may contact me at home 321-2087 or 1115 Rim Rock Road El Dorado 67042, johng@carlisleinc.net, grange@house.state.ks.us, www.johngrange.net.
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