CNN:
“Assuring health care is a shared social responsibility,” says the interim report of the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, a committee that was created by Congress. The purpose was to discover what type of health care system that people want.
The report that was created offers the guidelines for a universal health care system,however, it does not go into the details of how such a system would be funded. Suggestions that have been made at different levels are an increase in the “sin taxes” (taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages)
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The Health Care Working Group was not designed to suggest any type of funding mechanisms, rather, to just state what was/is needed in a health care system. Their report counters George W. Bush’s free market philosophy re: health care. The report has its other opponents, among them Health Care America as it supports the free market theory of health care.
“It implies massive new funding sources, massive new laws would be needed. We want universal access, but this report just pushes all the difficult problems onto somebody else’s plate. It says government needs to do it all.”
The legislation that created this group was passed in late 2003. Congress approved $5.5 million for funding, beginning in Febuary of last year. The working group claims its memeberhip is diverse as the members representing consumers, the disabled, business and labor, and health care providers.
Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Ron Wyden of Oregon claim credit for the creation of the Health Care Working Group. Wyden justifies this as follows:
“We decided, let’s try something else. Let’s go to the public and give them a chance, not in terms of writing a bill, but let them provide a kind of general roadmap where the country ought to head.”
Coincidentally, that same legislation also created Part D.