U.S. Health Insurance Program for Individuals
“On Their Own and Uninsured” (July 31) highlights a national problem that calls for a national solution before millions more working Americans lose their health insurance coverage. No state, even one as large as California, can solve the problem on its own. The American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the second-largest physician organization in the United States, has proposed a plan to cover all Americans within the next seven years.
The proposal would establish uniform eligibility rules for Medicaid and each state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, guarantee adequate federal funding support for such programs, create an innovative income-based premium support program to help individuals buy coverage on their own or through an employer and require that insurers set their premiums based on the health risks of the entire community, not on the health of the individual being insured. Coverage would no longer be dependent on where a person worked or where he or she lived.
It is time for all of us to call on those running for Congress to commit to cover everyone by the end of this decade.
Melvyn Sterling MD, FACP
Governor, Southern California
Region II, ACP-ASIM
Orange
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