02/06/10 - The Storm Lake Times: Health care reform: Rep. King's political stunt, by Niel Ritchie
Published in The Storm Lake Times 02/06/10
Health care reform: Rep. King's political stunt
By Niel Ritchie
After a year of misinformation and absurdity surrounding health-care reform, it’s saying something that few moments, if any, reached the heights of last week’s half-witted political stunt by 11 House Republicans.
Led by Rep. Steve King, these conservatives unveiled the Declaration of Health Care Independence, an oversized document signed with permanent markers to underscore their opposition to health reform. Too bad for signatories that the “De- claration” actually endorses the government takeover of health care it warns against — and argues the same point of view as reform advocates.
Their document states that the health-care system, “as a matter of principle,” must: “treat private citizens at least as well as political officials” and “empower, rather than limit, an open and accessible market- place of health care choice and opportunity.”
Overlooked, apparently, by King and his cohort is that they receive coverage through a government plan paid for by taxpayers, and that choice and op- portunity undergird the public option they’ve spent months maligning.
These lapses call into ques- tion King’s judgment, most certainly — but, as importantly, they reveal just how feckless and reckless he is with the wellbeing of Iowans.
More than 302,000 residents already live in fear of getting sick or injured because they lack health coverage, yet every day another 70 of our neighbors, friends and families fall into that vast pool of the uninsured. Many are children.
In “The State of Working Iowa 2009,” the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project reports that between 2000 and 2007 Iowa was one of only four states to experience a double-digit loss in job-based health plans covering children, as 82,000 youths lost access to care. Some was the result of rising unemployment; in other cases, however, employers simply couldn’t afford to continue providing coverage. As the Department of Health and Human Services reported last year, more than seven in 10 of Iowa’s uninsured residents were in families with at least one full-time worker.
It’s a situation that’s unlikely to change anytime soon: The state already has lost around 42,000 jobs with health benefits, and experts predict that by the end of this year another 44,000 will be gone. Without reform that controls health costs and expands access to care, hundreds of thousands of Iowans will remain at risk.
Against this backdrop, King’s opposition to health reform, never mind this latest cynical act, is as callous as it is indefensible. The people of Iowa deserve better.
Storm Lake Times.pdf
