Healthcare
Support for universal healthcare and increased accessibility and quality have been staple issues for Congressman Thompson. With the introduction of the Minority Health and Healthcare Disparities Act, Thompson assumed the leadership on advancing these causes. He supports making childcare more affordable, prescription drugs less expensive, leave time more widely available and AIDS research - in the U.S. and in Africa - a top budgetary priority. Thompson is committed to increasing the number of African-American physicians in Mississippi. While over 35% of the state’s population is African-American, only 6.1% of the physicians are African-American. Congressman Thompson is fighting on several fronts to bring parity between these figures.
As Americans, we are used to being number one. Health care is no exception. We are certainly number one in one aspect of health care – our health care is the most expensive health care in the world. The United States spends, per capita, nearly $5000 per year, more than twice the average amount of other industrialized counties. The United States also spends the highest proportion of Gross Domestic Product – 13% - on health care. And the problem is worsening. Health insurance premiums in the United States have had double-digit rate increases for four consecutive years, five times greater than both inflation and wage increases.
If we were getting the best health care in the world to accompany the high cost of health care in the U.S., that would be one thing. But in fact, the U.S. ranked 37th out of 191 member states in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) in terms of overall health system performance 2000 World Health Report which takes into account several health care indicators. For example, the U.S. has the 7th highest infant mortality rate of the 30 most industrialized countries. Finally, there are roughly 46 million people in the United States with no health insurance coverage, that’s 16% of the population. None of the other industrialized nations have this problem. Something is wrong with our system.
Our nation’s hospitals are currently all operating at effectively 100% capacity. At a time when an avian influenza pandemic is looming, how can we expect to protect our citizens with such a broken health care system? We saw that our hospitals were overwhelmed during Hurricane Katrina. Our health care system is not ready for a widespread infectious disease outbreak, natural disaster, or a terrorist attack. Quite frankly, our hospitals are stretched so thin that they are not really ready for Friday night. We need to make the investments necessary to ensure that our health care system has the capacity to treat all patients who need help, and we must insure that all Americans have a health plan that allows them access to the system. We need to make the American health care number one in patient care, not just cost.
