Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan was formed in the Fall of 2005. Our goal is to develop and promote a bill in the Indiana State Legislature that will be introduced in January of 2007. We seek to build a coalition with individuals and groups. We endorse the plan promoted by Physicians for a National Health Program.

THE HEALTHCARE CRISIS

The employer-based health care system is failing and is adversely affecting the public health, as well as the financial wellbeing of private industry and the nation's position as a global economic superpower. Health care policy and public health experts are increasingly calling for major health care reform and an end to the incremental changes in the for-profit, market-driven sector of our health care economy.

Largely because of health care costs, businesses large and small are experiencing such severe financial difficulties that they are both discontinuing or minimizing benefits and outsourcing or changing the nature of their labor forces toward either minimum wage or part-time employment. Simultaneously, wages have stagnated and personal private health insurance is unaffordable for most. Indeed, half of our nation's uninsured are employed full time, and the number of uninsured now exceeds forty-five million. More than eight hundred thousand Hoosiers lack coverage.

The nation now spends close to fifteen percent of its GDP on health care and spends twice as much per capita as any other nation. Despite our high rate of spending, measures of public health indicate that our health is worse than health in other industrialized countries. Administrative costs in health care simply to handle private insurance divert hundreds of billions of dollars annually from the direct provision of health care. The private health insurance industry routinely experiences inflation of three to four times the general rate, enjoys huge profit margins, discriminates against the sick and minorities, and adds no value to the health care sector. Economists agree that these trends are unsustainable. We concur and maintain that, in the absence of major federal reform, Indiana must seriously examine alternatives.

The United States has had, since 1964, a program which might serve as a model for universal, publicly funded, government administered, privately delivered health care. It is called Medicare. It has provided those over sixty-five and the disabled with more efficient, higher quality, more cost-effective care than its private insurance counterparts. Its administrative costs are a fraction of those of the employer-based sector.

We believe that the time has come for adoption of legislation which will establish an Indiana state system of universal health coverage, publicly funded, publicly administered, privately delivered, globally budgeted, and inclusive of all our state's population without qualification.

What is Single Payer Health Insurance?

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.

Read the documents on the Physicians for Nathioal Health Care for researched and indepth information.

www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php
Click above link for Single Payer resources.

Mission: Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan is a group of Indiana citizens who support a publicly financed, privately delivered (single payer) universal health plan at the state and national level. HCHP is working to educate the public and the legislature about the benefits of a single payer plan. We are seeking individuals and groups who have an interest in helping achieve this goal.

Hoosiers@hchp.info
P.O. Box 2632 Bloomington, IN 47402-2632