Larouche Role in Obama Health Care plan

[Gary McGowan]

What is the La Rouche wish list for health care reform?

LaRouche Answers Obama's Challenge: ("What's your plan? What's your alternative? What do you plan to do for all those families whose medical bills are driving them into bankruptcy? ..." ) http://www.larouchepac.com/node/11055

The above video is only a minute and a half, and Mr. Obama gets more time than Mr. LaRouche, because the answer is short and sweet.

1. Eliminate HMOs.

2. Fully restore the previous [U.S.] health care program [the Hill-Burton system].

3. Implement a single-payer system to assist in the implimentation of the restored Hill-Burton system.

Hill Burton’ Hospital Principle [March, 2009]

The rebuilding effort can best be done in the spirit of the 1946 "Hospital Survey and Construction Act," which, for 25 years, built up the hospital and health-care system to high standards and accessibility. The nine-page law, often called the "Hill-Burton Act," after the bipartisan co-sponsors of the Act, Sens. Lister Hill (D-Ala.), and Harold Burton (R-Ohio), mandated Federal and local cooperation and funding, to see that the goal would be achieved of having a community hospital in every county, to guarantee hospital care to citizens: in rural counties at a ratio of 5.5 beds per 1,000 (sparsely settled regions require redundancy); and in urban areas, 4.5 beds per 1,000.

The Hill-Burton concept sees the community hospital as the hub of regional networks of health services, involving education, public health, sanitation, defense against epidemics and disasters, and research.

At the same time that the Hill-Burton hospital construction boom proceeded—providing many of the 3,089 U.S. counties with their first hospital ever—public-health programs and applied medical R&D all but eliminated polio, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Pertussis (whooping cough) declined from a peak of 156,000 cases in 1947 to 14,800 in 1960; diphtheria declined from 18,700 cases in 1945, to 900 in 1960. Mosquito control programs—including the use of the insecticide DDT, begun in 1940—were on the way to eliminating malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

By the mid-1970s, the Hill-Burton goal of 4.5 beds per 1,000 was nearly reached as the national average. Intervening laws furthered the approach: Amendments to the Hill-Burton Act in 1954 authorized funds for chronic-care facilities; in 1965, the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs were begun.

Then came the downshift, in line with the 1970s policy turn towards deregulation, privatization, and globalization. On Dec. 29, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed into law, with bipartisan support, the "Health Maintenance Organization and Resources Development Act," which, along with follow-up laws, ushered in the era of deregulation of health-care delivery, to the point where today, over 2,000 hospitals have shut down.

Likewise, core public-health functions have been drastically reduced; hundreds of counties now have next to no programs at all.

from 4-pg PDF here.
About the same text (I quoted only a portion above) is also here as html on a web page.