By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

A national budget is not just an economic document. To me, it is a moral agenda for what kind of nation the president and Congress want us to have — a fair and caring country or a land of injustice and greed.

President Bush’s latest health care plan is typical of his entire $2.77 trillion budget proposal, which turns the idea of morality in politics on its head by giving more to the very rich and taking away from the rest of us.

His answer to the nation’s health care crisis — a human tragedy of soaring costs, vast economic waste and millions who don’t get any medical care — is called health savings accounts. These are tax-free savings accounts tied to health plans with high deductibles that would force most people to pay more out-of-pocket or go without health care.

HSAs would help the wealthy shield more income from taxation and motivate employers to cut costs by terminating traditional health insurance, shifting the risks and expense to working people.

But the 46 million Americans who can’t afford private health insurance and are not covered by their employers will still be left out, unable to afford Bush’s HSAs. Most working families don’t have extra money to deposit in the accounts. But many well-to-do people will be able to use the accounts as tax beating investments, and the greatest benefits of HSAs will go to the banks and brokers that manage them.

This plan is another lie to the American people, because it will not provide for the uninsured or cut the rising medical bills and prescription drug prices that exploit everyone in this country. In fact, it’s not really about health care at all. It’s about privatizing another chunk of the economy and transferring money from the working class to big business and the wealthy. The health accounts are just another form of the private investment accounts that Bush wanted to replace Social Security with.

Of course, this lopsided scheme fits right in to a “reverse Robin Hood” budget that cuts billions of dollars from education, Medicare and Medicaid to finance tax cuts for the very wealthy — and lock them in forever — while others struggle to make a living. Bush’s tax cuts have already turned the surplus that Bill Clinton left behind into a record deficit, saddling our children and grandchildren with a huge national debt.

The budget squanders billions to rebuild Iraq but breaks Bush’s promise to the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast by leaving out critical funds for repairing Katrina’s damage. While pouring $6 billion a month into the endless war in Iraq, the fiscal plan would dishonor our brave young men and women by cutting veterans’ medical care by 13 percent.

The Bush budget would cut school aid, drug-free school programs, child abuse prevention, child care, college aid and job training by over $50 billion. It would eliminate food assistance for 420,000 low-income seniors, take Food Stamps from 300,000 working families and deny free meals to 40,000 needy schoolchildren. It would even cancel Social Security’s meager $255 lump-sum burial benefit.

This budget is fiscally bankrupt and morally bankrupt. Its Medicare cuts alone would take over $1 billion from health care in New York State and New York City — on top of Gov. Pataki’s planned $1.5 billion cut in Medicaid — slashing services, closing hospital beds and robbing more Americans of medical care.

Instead of slashing health care funding and promoting phony solutions like the HSAs, we should eliminate excess profits, cut administrative waste and control the escalating drug prices that victimize us all.

What national health insurance would do
I believe we need a universal, national, single-payer health insurance system that covers everyone in the United States for all necessary medical care, including mental, outpatient and hospital care, dental and vision services and prescription drugs.

By replacing the high overhead and huge profits of the private health insurance industry with a single governmental payer, a national insurance plan could end deductibles and co-payments and still save billions of dollars.

We can’t continue spending more on health care every year and getting less health care, paying exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, watching medical bills send thousands into bankruptcy and seeing 18,000 Americans a year die because they lack health insurance. We can’t live with ever-rising health costs that bust city budgets, eat up union benefits and undermine wage increases.

You can make a difference in the struggle for a fair health care system. If you haven't already sent in a coupon demanding national health insurance, please click here to send a message to your Senator or Congress member. I will personally deliver your message to Congress.