Health care costs are the driving forces behind the United State’s $9 trillion national debt and future generations will have to pay for it, former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said at a Thursday luncheon of the League of Women Voters of Lane County.
Kitzhaber’s solution? Control the costs by restructuring the U.S. health care system and by upgrading it so that it is more equitable and sustainable.
Kitzhaber said the current system is unfair because it requires working people to pay for health care costs even if they can’t afford health insurance themselves.
Kitzhaber talked about his proposed bill, the Oregon Better Health Act, which would in part allow for more state control over allocating health resources and a core of essential health services. He said that if people can create a vision for what they want their health care system to look like and expose the current system’s problems, then they could pressure the federal government to act and change the system.
“If we start in Oregon and build consensus about what we would do if anything were possible with these public resources we currently spend on health care, and then enact legislation that reflects that vision, we can force debate about the entire structure of the entire U.S. health care system,” Kitzhaber said.
Kitzhaber said that when the current Medicare and Medicaid programs were created in 1965, they did not take into account the current global economy and the subsidies of billions of dollars, which are supported by everyone who pays taxes. Since 2003, Medicaid costs have started to exceed the costs of primary and secondary education in many state budgets, he said.
“As the cost of health care continues to rise, it will limit our abilities to invest in schools and infrastructure and a whole host of things that are viable to our citizens,” he said.
Instead of being a copy of Canada’s health care system, a new health care system should be unique to the United States, Kitzhaber said. People should demand health benefits in dollars they spend on health care, and the system should benefit everyone, he said.
-Calvin Hall