Green Party Candidate Urges Governor to support Single-Payer Health Care Plan

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Spisak for State Rep- 60th District
Latest News  December 20, 2007

Spisak urges Governor to Support Single-Payer Health Care Plan

On August 1, 2007, Governor Strickland issued a press release announcing that Ohio was one of 14 states selected to participate in the 2007 Coverage Institute sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program.

The release explained that "The SCI program assists states which are considering systematic substantial and comprehensive health reform to develop and implement policies that will expand access to health care for the entire uninsured population in a state by expanding public programs and private sector reforms. The program will assist the state in considering a spectrum of health care reforms..... SCI will work with a team of Ohio policy, legislative and stakeholder participants to facilitate discussion of reform options for the state and will assist in modeling and implementing those options."

Accordingly, Gov. Strickland has assembled a task force comprising a 12-member State Coverage Initiative Team and a 40-member Healthcare Coverage Initiative Advisory Committee. $500,000 tax dollars have been allocated to study health care options — the goal being to cover a third of Ohio's 1.5 million uninsured. What about the other two-thirds? And what about the additional millions of underinsured?

Incredibly, single-payer — the only plan that would help ALL Ohioans, uninsured and underinsured alike — will NOT be included among the plans to be studied. Only plans that include the private insurance companies are being considered. This is unacceptable. (See letter from U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich to Governor Strickland urging inclusion of single-payer in the study.)

Today Dennis Spisak e-mailed Gov. Strickland the following message:

As an Ohio constituent, I want a single-payer plan (H.B.186 and S.B. 168) to be one of the five models studied by the Governor's task force for healthcare reform in Ohio.

I support Single-payer health care for the following reasons:

· Single-payer is the only plan that will provide guaranteed,

quality, comprehensive medical and dental care to EVERY Ohioan.


· A single-payer system is the most fiscally conservative. Ohio

H.B.186 and its companion bill in the Senate, S.B.168, i.e., the

Health Care For All Ohioans Act, would save more than $11 billion in

health care costs.


· Commissioned studies were done in Colorado and California by the highly regarded Lewin group. Single-payer was included as a model. They concluded that single-payer will, "cover more people, for more services, for less money."


· Plans being considered by the State Coverage Initiative Team of 12

have been tried in other states and have failed miserably, resulting in an increase in the number of uninsured. It is a disservice to the people of Ohio not to include a single-payer model.


· The people of Ohio insist that a single-payer plan be considered in the comparative analysis done by our governor, for Ohioans, with our tax dollars.



Sincerely,



Dennis S. Spisak

Green Party Candidate

Ohio State Rep-60th District