Bob’s Story

About Me

I am a retiree who lives in Midland, Michigan. I devote my life, as a volunteer, to the movement to establish Improved Medicare for All via single-payer health care in the United States.

I have a working relationship, as a volunteer, with the many Americans who are on our Medicare for All teams that contribute time and effort to this website and to the Million Letters for Health Care campaign. All of us are volunteers.

I have never been alone in the efforts related to this website and the letters campaign, starting with the contributions of the members of the Medicare for All Technical Team, who have now contributed hundreds of hours, and the first member of the Medicare for All Review Team, who spent over 300 hours doing reviews and providing feedback by e-mails and by telephone discussions. As of early 2011 we did an estimate of the value of the contributions to date; at that time it was over $500,000. That’s peanuts compared to the opposition, but the opposition must pay for their labor costs among the hundreds of millions of dollars that they spend.

Also, I am a member of these organizations:
— Healthcare-Now
— Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), which started about 21 years ago and has over 17,000 physicians who support an improved Medicare for All; I have a health care advocate membership with them
— Also, I got “my start” by being active with Single-Payer Action Network Ohio (SPAN-Ohio).
— I have either active working (volunteer) relationships or on-going communications with individuals who are members of many additional health care for all / single-payer organizations.

I was born and raised in Missouri and earned a degree in chemical engineering there prior to moving to Michigan. My wife and I have two sons, one a scientist and one an elementary school teacher, who now live in other states. My career was in engineering (research, then manufacturing) and then computer applications. I am accustomed to operating based as firmly as possible on facts. With contributions of time and effort of many Americans … for the content and the technical assistance, I maintain this website based on a “continuous improvement” process, which many manufacturing companies use for their operations.

My support for United States to implement Improved Medicare for All is based on multiple life experiences and from knowledge obtained by researching, reading and studying.

About My Experiences and Resulting Opinions

• Experiences help establish attitudes.
  • Good people. Due to a couple of very people-oriented work experiences, one in my teens and one in my 50’s, I developed the opinion that most people are good people. From all my experiences I feel that most people not only care, at least about their own family and friends. Those same caring people are willing to learn about how the United States can and will establish a health-care-for-all system and how America and Americans will benefit.
  • Peace of mind. Our family-of-four’s most significant experience among European and North American countries was that we lived in the Canadian province of Ontario for 4.5 years. Our health care was good. Equally important I noticed a peace of mind and an associated “down-to-earth” calmness about life among most Canadians. That certainly is partly due to having a health-care-for-all system.
• Major surgery as a learning experience about the “system”
  • My surgery in the United States in 2006 resulted in the insurance company and me paying only about 25% of what was billed!
  • The surgeon for my surgery in 2006 agreed to accept the “reasonable and customary charges” that are apparently already set among the (over 1300!) health insurance company payers and the medical professionals. That is setting prices.
  • There are plenty of price negotiations occurring in the current complex system that hold down income of health care professionals and their facilities … beyond the other obvious negative impacts on incomes: excessive administrative costs and malpractice premiums, both of which will decrease dramatically with Improved Medicare for All.
• Awareness of large health insurance costs.
  • A close relative now has a whopping $4,000 deductible before the health insurance company pays anything … and the health insurance company does not pay for everything after the deductible has been met (paid).
  • Another close relative has a $3,000 per year deductible for outpatient services that he “consumes” quickly each year due to his medical needs.
  • My retiree health insurance premiums increased significantly. The total rise has been over 700%! I don’t know how long I can afford that situation.
• Excessive administration.
  • I have experienced numerous challenges with the administration of the billing process by the health care providers and the insurance company. Not everyone has the combination of awareness, interest, ability, knowledge and time to track down mistakes by insurance companies and the providers.
  • I worked for a year registering patients for hospital services. That front-line job makes up just a very tiny part of the complex administrative excess.
• Awareness of the impact.
  • During the last several years I been paying attention to the many spaghetti dinners, raffles, auctions and other benefits for families who are in massive amounts of debt due to medical expenses for a specific person, who may still be living or is now deceased. During one week in my community there were two front-page articles in my local newspaper. It’s sad to think of the unnecessary physical, emotional and financial pain that people experience.
  • In February 2007 the elected officials for my county in Michigan established that an additional group of county employees, at the time of their retirement, will no longer be provided with health insurance. That’s exactly what my company did years ago, effective 1/1/1993.

My Conclusions

We must do what all other free-market, industrialized nations do: provide health care for all, which according to the book Health Care Meltdown¹, means implement a national health program with everyone having health insurance via a simplified system. In other words, we need Improved Medicare for All via single-payer health care.

A way to make a significant contribution on getting our health-care-for-all system is here:

Participate in the Million Letters for Health Care Campaign to build the power of the people via ten million persons knowing “What Every American Knows” and getting their questions answered. Along the way to having millions of participants … and then continuing until we achieve a 67% support level in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, flood the U.S. Congress with communications: first with our massive number of letters, then with our massive number of letters and phone calls.

Then we need to:

• elect supportive candidates, especially in U.S. elections;
• give strong support for officials and candidates who support single-payer; include the topic of Improved Medicare for All as a factor in our decision-making for voting and get people to vote;

Along the way we need to take care of ourselves to help ourselves feel good, have energy, avoid pain, have a long and productive life, … and make a contribution to the control of the nation’s health care costs.

Invitation: Sign Up
to help get Improved Medicare for All.