MEDITRUST-USA
Lifetime of Quality Health Care For All Americans
With your support we CAN make it a reality!!
Mission
Statement: To promote universal health care coverage for all Americans by educating
the public about the logic and economic necessity of a single payer health care
system in the USA. Also to mobilize grass roots support for this concept by
educating the American public about the features of this type of health care
delivery.
The founder
of MEDITRUST-USA is Rade Pejic, M.D., F.A.C.S. After practicing clinical
surgery for over 40 years both in the US Navy and the private sector, Dr. Pejic
has concluded that from a moral, ethical and practical point of view, universal
health care coverage for all Americans is the right way to provide health care.
After
extensive research and analysis of the current health care options, scholarly
M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s have come to the same conclusion, which is: A one payer health care program is the best
possible solution which would benefit everyone living in the USA. The following is a list of just a few books
that were written to explain this concept to the public:
These books
discuss the economics for such a system. The time has come to act and make
universal health care operational in the USA. Everyone has complained for
years about the cost and complexity of health care in the USA; now is the time
to resolve these issues for all of us!!!
One payer health care
system, regardless if it is administered by the government or an independent
not for profit entity such as, for example, a national health care medical trust would benefit everyone living in
the USA. This concept did not evolve
overnight. Only after years of research
and failure of other insurance options (PPO’s, HMO’s, Managed care) to solve
the health care delivery quagmire, did the one payer concept of health care
come to be a logical solution. The medical billing quagmire would be solved
once and for all, health care providers (doctors, hospitals) would be paid in a
timely manner and our corporations would be better able to compete in a global
economy.
I. Did You Know???
Health
Facts
1.) Universal
Health Care will be of major benefit to corporate America by lowering their
health care costs for their employees and thus lowering corporate America's
overhead.
Now, for every car built in the USA, there is a
"built-in" cost for health
expenditures for each autoworker. The costs are:
Built in
Cost/Worker # of Covered
Workers for 2006
General Motors
$1600.00
150,000
Chrysler
$1500.00
63,788
Ford
$1200.00
128,000
2.) Next
to worldwide terrorism and the economy, healthcare quagmire is the second most
important problem facing the United States of America, which is an integral
part of our economy.
3.) 2003 health care spending as % of gross
domestic product
15.3% -
United States
10.9% -
Switzerland
10.7% -
Germany
9.7% -
Canada
9.5% -
France
All of these countries provide health care insurance to all of
their citizens except the USA.
4.) Projections are that in the next 10 years
the USA will spend 18.7% of gross domestic product on health care, for 2008
that number has increased to 16.7%.
5.) "OF
ALL THE FORMS OF INEQUALITY, INJUSTRICE IN HEALTH CARE IS THE MOST SHOCKING AND
MOST INHUMAN."
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1966
6.) The
following sign was posted at the entrance to one hospital lab area. Universal
Health Care would eliminate such confusion!!
ATTENTION
ALL LABORATORY PATIENTS
If you have any of the following insurance plans, please inform the staff:
Lab one (Lab One)
Anthem - HM0 (LabCorp)
First Health (Lab Corp)
Humana (LabCorp)
Sagamore HMO (LabCorp)
Your insurance allows us to collect your blood samples here but requires
us to send the tests out to another lab. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Note: If you have "CIGNA HMO", you must go to a Quest
Lab collection site. Your blood cannot be collected here.
7.) Only
a one payer system (Universal Health Care) for everyone in the USA would
succeed. If this system was implemented today, it would save the entire country
300-400 billion dollars in health care expenditures per year.
8.) Limited Access
·
48 million Americans have no health insurance and of those 40
million have jobs, which do not provide health care coverage.
·
40 million with inadequate coverage
·
45,000 Americans die every year because they do not have health
insurance, that is one human life every 12 minutes!!
9.) We
need to compete in a global economy, whether we like or not, and Universal
Health Care System would put us in a better position to do so.
Corporate America would greatly benefit from such a system because a one payer
system will lower its overhead significantly.
10.) Total
health care premium costs for General Motors is 5.2 billion dollars per year as
of 2004, which makes it difficult for it to compete in a global economy.
11.) 18 billion dollars would be saved in health
care expenditures each year if every American would cut their salt intake to
2300 mg/day.
12.) However, in order for MEDITRUST-USA
(a one payer health care program) to be viable and acceptable by everyone, it
must have following key features:
1.
It must be bipartisan and have no political affiliation, no
special interest groups should be identified with it.
2.
It must be all inclusive for
everyone. 300 plus million people would
dilute the risk pool and make it affordable for all. Coverage will be from birth to death.
3. This
is not an entitlement, everyone who gets a paycheck must pay into the health
care fund.
4. Those
who are not employed, will be covered. Also, pre-existing health problems will
not be an issue.
5. Every
patient will have a choice both of physician and the hospital that he or she
goes to.
6. Health
care trust fund could be administered by an independent free standing entity,
which does not have to be run by the government necessarily.
7. Those
providing health care services must be accountable to the health care trust in
order to avoid waste, duplication of services and fraud in the system.
8. It
must not be a burden on the taxpayers.
The nearly 40% that would be saved by this program would be placed back
in the health care trust to benefit us all.
9. No
system is perfect, therefore, the national health care trust must be amendable
to change as it is operational. The
only constant is that every American is covered by the plan and has a choice of
doctor and the hospital that cares for them.
10. It
must provide incentive. Like in any profession, those health care
providers who deliver quality care, are more talented and work harder will
prosper.
11. It
needs to be simple and understandable by everyone. One plastic card would have each person’s encrypted social
security # as well as all of their vital statistics and medical history. This information could only be accessed by
the doctor and hospital of the patient’s choice.
A single payer health care system
would be better for everyone. When one
is sick and compromised, the last thing
that the patient should worry about is how to pay the medical bill.
13.) More than 140
million Americans are medically obese which leads to:
a.) Adult onset diabetes.
b.) Hypertension.
c.) Heart disease.
d.) Arthritis.
e.) Pulmonary problems.
f.) Sleep apnea.
As a result,
all of the above factors lead to increased health care costs for our country.
14.) Direct
medical costs due to diabetes have been increased from 44 billion dollars in
1992 to 92 billion dollars in 2007.
15.) If
all of us walked more each day (3-5 miles), we would lose weight and be
healthier.
16.) Next
to obesity, which affects 66% of Americans, cigarette smoking is the second
worst addiction adversely affecting our health. It also contributes to
billions of dollars in health care spending!!
17.) Health care spending is 4.3 times the
amount spent on national defense.
18.) 2004 Gross National Income:
$11,696,170,000,000
2004 U.S. Health Care
Spending:
$1,800,000,000,000
19.) Universal
Health Care System would save $300,000,000,000 or more on health care
expenditures by eliminating waste and duplication of services.
20.) Up
to 30% of Medicare spending is wasted. Poor treatment is common. A study by the
Institute of Medicine has suggested that medical errors are the country's 8th
largest cause of death.
21.) If
we add those who get Medicaid, Medicare, federal employees and other publicly
financed healthcare, such as that for the military (active and retired), the
public sector already pays for 49% of American healthcare. The total is near 60% if you include the tax
subsidies.
22.) The
biggest recent policy initiative in 2003 was the decision to add drug coverage
to Medicare and was the biggest expansion of the government health program
since 1965.
23.) Today
Medicare funding is satisfied by equal contributions of 1.45% from the employee
and the employer from gross pay.
24.) Although
48 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health
care than other industrialized nations and those countries provide health
insurance to all their citizens.
Meaningful health care reform is
a true measure of the character of a country. In a country such as ours, where people can buy a $100,000 car
and live in million dollar homes, it is shameful that the major reason for
filing for bankruptcy is peoples inability to pay for their health care bill.
25.) Another
option is a health care co-op. In this
case scenario, in order to be eligible for federal funds, a co-op must:
a) Be nonprofit
and member owned
b) Not have been
an insurer prior to its conception
c) Not be
sponsored by any state or local government
d) Exist only to
offer individual and small group plans in its state or states
e) Use any
profits, that may be generated, to lower premiums and improve member benefits.