I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Ojo Sarco resident and rural health policy guru Carol Miller — who served on the Clinton Health Care Task Force in the ’90s – wrote an op-ed in the influential Washington D.C. paper Roll Call about health care reform.
Miller, who twice ran for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District including last year, pulled no punches in her commentary outlining her thoughts on the need for drastic health care reform, and specifically, advocating the need for a single-payer system.
“In the 15 years since Congress gave up on universal health care, about 300,000 Americans have died from the lack of health coverage alone, using the government’s own data,” Miller began.
She also wrote about the financial toll that the current health care system has on many families.
Miller has a different view of things than President Barack Obama. In response to a question about the single-payer system at his Rio Rancho credit card reform town hall, Obama responded:
If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you’ve got this system that’s already in place. We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.
Miller, who has run for office as a registered Democrat, Green and an independent, says that such an incremental approach is not useful and just plain won’t work.
“By leaving the universal, social insurance option out of the debate, it is easier for the industry, media and some Members of Congress to paint the mixed public-private plan as an extreme rather than what it is — the middle ground,” Miller wrote. “And while not ideal, the mixed plan is a place for Congressional compromise.”
Miller also warned that getting nothing done would be dangerous, writing, “Without real reform, there will be more tinkering at the edges until the tsunami of medical costs finally forces the government to do the right thing.”
