If history is any guide, we are nearing an important opportunity for health care reform.
As a member of Congress who serves on a key health committee, I have been involved in many debates about how to restructure and improve our health care system. These discussions tend to occur every 10 to 15 years when costs rise and coverage declines to levels that attract national attention.
Unfortunately, the minor tweaks and threats of reform we have made in the past have not resulted in lasting change. As a result, we are spending more -- and getting less -- than any other industrialized nation.
Republican proposals for health care reform call for moving people into health savings accounts and high-deductible health plans. But employers don't have to contribute to these accounts, and most don't.
These plans also provide inadequate benefits -- most don't cover maternity care, for example -- and have such high out-of-pocket limits that people cannot afford needed treatments.
These aren't practical solutions designed to improve people's health but recipes for dismantling employer-sponsored care and for putting people "on their own." That's the wrong direction for America.
The right direction is to develop a universal health care system that would cover everyone while reducing national health expenditures. That's why I've introduced AmeriCare, a practical proposal to ensure that everyone has affordable health coverage.
AmeriCare builds on what works -- both employer coverage and Medicare -- to provide universal coverage with minimal disruption to the current system.
For the past four decades, the stability and affordability of Medicare has helped millions of seniors and people with disabilities live longer, healthier lives. Because of Medicare, families have been able to save for their children's educations rather than having to pay for their parents' health care.
Medicare is also affordable. Whereas private insurers devote 30 percent of funds for marketing, administration and profit, Medicare operates on a 2 percent to 3 percent margin. Health care providers have also benefited from Medicare.
