David Cozad
is a Green Dog Democrat!
He will search for, find, and bring back home Green jobs for the people in his district.
He will use the skills developed over the years in many careers to bring not only high paying jobs, but the opportunity to keep those jobs.
is a Green Dog Democrat!
He will search for, find, and bring back home Green jobs for the people in his district.
He will use the skills developed over the years in many careers to bring not only high paying jobs, but the opportunity to keep those jobs.
Paid for by Cozad for Congress
Healthcare
The Problem:
Health care is too expensive for the middle class and the working poor. We are faced with financial disaster or health care for only the very rich.
The Solution:
Health care cost control does not mean taking away or restricting access to basic health care. It means we actually manage the processes and procedures that make high quality, efficient, and effective health care. Poor or bad processes and procedures cost Americans a little less than $800 billion a year. That is the cost of the Health Care Reform over 10 years. The fixes are already known and only require the political will to implement them.
It is my personal belief the Public Option is the best way to put those fixes into the doctor’s office and hospitals. The failure of the health insurance companies to implement any of these fixes during the last several decades indicates they believe the status quo is fine even if 19,000 people die from lack of health care.
Background:
When I first considered running for office, I was expecting that healthcare would be a minor issue about a few loose ends. However, the battle for healthcare in the US has turned into a full scale war between the haves and the have nots with spice from the lunatic fringe. I expect that I will be fully involved in the fight when I take office in January 2011. I am expecting that President Obama will get a good healthcare law signed by April 2010, but not a great one. It will have many items left out or not implemented or delayed.
Health care is too expensive for the middle class and the working poor. We are faced with financial disaster or health care for only the very rich.
The Solution:
Health care cost control does not mean taking away or restricting access to basic health care. It means we actually manage the processes and procedures that make high quality, efficient, and effective health care. Poor or bad processes and procedures cost Americans a little less than $800 billion a year. That is the cost of the Health Care Reform over 10 years. The fixes are already known and only require the political will to implement them.
It is my personal belief the Public Option is the best way to put those fixes into the doctor’s office and hospitals. The failure of the health insurance companies to implement any of these fixes during the last several decades indicates they believe the status quo is fine even if 19,000 people die from lack of health care.
Background:
When I first considered running for office, I was expecting that healthcare would be a minor issue about a few loose ends. However, the battle for healthcare in the US has turned into a full scale war between the haves and the have nots with spice from the lunatic fringe. I expect that I will be fully involved in the fight when I take office in January 2011. I am expecting that President Obama will get a good healthcare law signed by April 2010, but not a great one. It will have many items left out or not implemented or delayed.
Personally, I view national healthcare as a national security issue. When I was a US Marine Corp officer, I had been trained in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare because these were the weapons the Soviet Union said they were going to use against us. From my biological warfare training, I learned that biological weapons were almost useless against a country and its military if they enjoyed a very strong healthcare system for its citizens and its soldiers. If a country has only a part of its citizens protected from disease, then it is vulnerable to any disease that attacks in mass the unprotected group.
History has many examples of this situation, especially in the last thousand years. As many European countries found out when the Black Plague or Cholera struck the working poor or freemen, the disease found its way into the homes of the rich and powerful through the servants' quarters. If the people that are cooking your food, cleaning your house, doing your laundry, etc. are sick, you are at high risk to get sick, also. We face the same risks by not providing healthcare for the working poor and even the illegal immigrants among us. For those who don’t want to provide healthcare for the illegal immigrants, then we must fix immigration by shipping them home and/or accepting them.
I also see healthcare as an economic imperative. Recently, I began building business models of how the healthcare system works using publicly traded private insurance companies as examples. It showed these companies cannot meet the needs of the general population if the premise of healthcare is to provide the most coverage, lowest cost, most innovation, and high quality care. Private health insurance companies could only provide service as a luxury accessory to the wealthy because;
· They can only extend coverage to the healthiest portion of the population. This is why 17% of the population is not covered now because that portion of the population is either the sickest and/or poorest of the whole population.
· They have to make a profit. [There seems to be an ego trip by the senior officers of these companies to match the pay of Wall Street.] Only the wealthy can afford the steadily increasing premiums of 10+% a year.
· The profit motive actually pushes against the need for high quality health care because a well or healthy patient would no longer need insurance. [This is the problem with getting young people to voluntarily buy health insurance.] Low quality would require the patient to be even more dependent on health care insurance.
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