Congress must move now on health care reforms

The focus last week was on the nation's uninsured - the estimated 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance. In New York there were rallies to mark "Cover the Uninsured Week." In the Twin Cities, Minnesota hospitals agreed to give discounts to the uninsured - or a least not to charge them more than insured people and in Milwaukee the medical society there was setting up a program to get doctors to volunteer to treat the uninsured.

Those are good, well-intentioned efforts. The fact that this country has roughly 15 percent of its population who lack health insurance is nothing to be proud of.

But others suggest that those numbers paint a bleaker picture of America's uninsured than is warranted. Merrill Matthews, director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, an advocacy council for health carriers, wrote recently that being uninsured doesn't equate to going without health care - they still show up at the emergency room. Which is true.

And Matthews also points out that many uninsured Americans are actually young and and most are working - those starting out in lower paying jobs and do not yet have health insurance or who elected not to buy it. For many, being uninsured is a temporary condition. The percentage for the nation's chronically uninsured - two years or longer - is much lower, roughly 6 percent.

That gives us a little better focus on the issue of the uninsured.

But that's just one of the stars - black stars - that are aligning in America's health care skies.

Let us list a few of them, but the numbers: 50 percent. That's the percentage of Americans who say they were forced to file bankruptcy because of medical bills or health problems. Three quarters of them had health insurance when their problems began.

15 percent. That, according to the World Health Organization, represents what administrative costs eat up of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies. In public insurance companies, those costs average 4 percent.

$5.2 billion. That's how much General Motors spent on health care for its 1.1 million employees last year. It's expected to rise 7.7 percent this year and has put the company in a health care crisis. Health care costs for the automaker run more than $1,500 for each vehicle produced. Last week the company's bonds were reduced to junk status.

More than 2.5 times. That's how much Racine Unified's healthcare costs increased from 1998-99 to 2003-2004 when it hit $36 million a year. Those costs are still rising.

We can connect those dots. Health care costs are crippling our industries and making it more difficult for them to compete against foreign manufacturers. Health care costs are squeezing school districts - like ours - and other governmental bodies and pushing their budgets out of whack and forcing service cuts.

And, for those who can afford coverage, the rise in premiums are affecting families up and down the block. By some accounts, the cost of family health care coverage has gone up almost 60 percent in the past four years.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has joined with South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham on legislation that would require Congress to take up health care reform legislation.

The bill doesn't dictate what the health care reforms should be - does not, for instance, set forth a plan for universal health coverage or any other proposal.

It only demands that Congress finally address America's rising crisis and come to terms with it. We would urge they do so before it is too late.

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