Despite all the politicking taking place in and around the hearing held Monday in Chicago on national health care, the overriding message transcended elections and campaigns.
Instead, witnesses at the hearing led by U.S. Senators Alan Dixon (D-Ill.) and George Mitchell (D-Maine) agreed with the people protesting outside: The country`s health-care system desperately needs reform.
That was the word from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who bemoaned the fact that ”the richest nation in the world has an infant mortality rate which continues to rank with Third World nations.”
That also was the word from 59-year-old Larry Menietti of Joliet, who said that since 1988, health insurance costs for him and his wife have gone from $3,578 a year with a $500 deductible to $8,306 a year with a $2,500 deductible.
Menietti never has been in the hospital, he said. He`s never even submitted a claim. ”Don`t make us live in fear that we won`t be able to pay next year`s health costs,” Menietti told the senators.
Other numbers were laid out at the session in Children`s Memorial Medical Center: 37 million Americans are without health insurance, and 50 million more are underinsured; the country spends 13 percent of its gross national product on health care, at least 40 percent more than in any other industrialized country; and it spends $2,900 per person per year on health care, compared with $1,300 for Germany and $1,100 for Japan.
”While most Americans believe there is a serious problem, there is not yet a consensus on what the solution ought to be,” said Mitchell, the Senate majority leader and a principal sponsor of the HealthAmerica bill approved last week by a Senate committee.
The bill would require employers to pay 80 percent of their workers`
health premiums or pay into a pool that would finance government health insurance for those without any.
Monday`s hearing, sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, was an attempt to move closer toward a national consensus, Mitchell said.
But some called it an attempt to move Dixon closer to victory in the March 17 Democratic primary by linking his name to an issue of vital importance to voters.
Dixon is one of 10 co-sponsors of HealthAmerica, but his opponents have criticized him for not signing on until six months after its introduction, a week after learning he faced tough primary opposition and three weeks after Harris Wofford won a Senate election in Pennsylvania touting national health insurance.
”This is a photo opportunity today,” said Carol Moseley Braun, Cook County recorder of deeds and a Dixon challenger. ”I don`t think this qualifies as a public hearing.”
Braun said people and groups who wanted to testify, especially those opposed to the HealthAmerica plan, were unfairly excluded, including herself. Mitchell responded that the logistics of hearings require that many people must be excluded and that in the course of six hearings held outside Washington, he has heard almost every viewpoint.
Braun supports a system like Canada`s and the one put before the U.S. House by Rep. Marty Russo (D-Ill.). That plan would make a far greater leap from the current system than HealthAmerica, calling on each state to deliver health insurance to all its residents under federal guidelines.
A coalition called Campaign for Better Health Care, which favors a system like Russo`s, held a boisterous news conference immediately outside the hearing room Monday.
”There are 40 million people without coverage, and they hold hearings on a budget-breaking plan that won`t cover everybody,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a coalition member, health adviser to Braun and president of Physicians for a National Health Plan.
