Healthcare has been the single biggest domestic crisis facing America for at least the last decade, and yet time and again Congress has applied Band-Aids to cover a gaping wound. Every other American, not including members of Congress, is one accident, illness or diagnosis away from financial ruin in the richest nation on Earth. If that isn’t an embarrassment as well as a call to action, then Congress has truly become indifferent to the American people.

Every time we apply a Band-Aid, more Americans get hurt or die because of our lack of vision and political will. A Health Savings Account (HSA) is a recent Band-Aid that provides the wealthy with a tax shelter, but does nothing for the uninsured and the millions of middle-class Americans who don’t earn enough to derive any benefit. The HSA is a major step toward segregating America into two classes: one where the very rich tax-shelter their way to healthcare coverage, and the other where the overwhelming majority of Americans gamble their health and lives every day. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy for an American family today is unpaid medical expenses.

Every time we apply a Band-Aid we make it harder for American business to remain competitive, forcing more employers to shift the financial burden of employer-provided health care coverage to employees or drop it altogether. Since 2000, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased by 87 percent while the average employee contribution increased more than 143 percent. Total spending on healthcare in the U.S. is projected to be 20 percent of our gross domestic product by 2015, double what’s spent in Switzerland, Canada and France. Yet, Americans are no healthier. In fact we actually have lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, and lower immunization rates. We are spending significantly more but getting substantially less, while the privatizers try to frighten people into remaining hostage to a failed system.

Every time we apply a Band-Aid it isn’t long before another story of abuse emerges. The attorney general in Massachusetts recently filed a lawsuit against Mega Life, parent company of Health Markets, which insures 650,000 people in 44 states, after Massachusetts policyholders discovered they’re not covered for doctor visits, prescription drugs or chemotherapy. In another case United Health Group agreed to pay $12 million to 36 states to settle investigations of past claims practices.

Every time we apply a Band-Aid we ignore the fact that government is the single largest purchaser of healthcare in America. Medicare, Medicaid, the DoD, the VA, the Indian Health Service, SCHIP and state employee health plans are a few examples of government doing what government can do best — establishing the common good in a nation founded on providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare.

Throughout the industrialized world, government, business, labor and citizens have worked together to figure out how to provide universal health care coverage in nation after nation. America urgently needs an American universal healthcare plan designed in 2007 to meet the needs of the American people.

In just over 40 years Medicare has provided healthcare security for virtually every older American. They no longer face poverty or refuse treatment because the expense could wipe them or their families out. With Medicare, they are treated for any illness because the only pre-existing condition is being an American. They obtain treatment locally, because Medicare partners with the private sector to deliver the services.

We already know how to solve America’s healthcare crisis. An American universal healthcare plan would accomplish in one stroke what Congress has been unwilling to do. The public sector would finance a guaranteed set of benefits for every American. The private sector would continue to deliver services, despite the doomsday rhetoric from profiteers who want to keep America divided into haves and have-nots.

The doomsday rhetoric from the profiteers ignores what the federal government does every day: protect, defend and promote the interests of the American people better than anyone else. We protect and defend our strategic interests with the best military in the world. We protect the American people by safeguarding everything from food and drugs to aviation. The U.S. record of achievement must include healthcare. Until Congress steps in and passes an American universal healthcare plan, the American people will pay more, suffer more and get a healthcare system that is the envy of no one and an embarrassment to everyone.

McDermott is chairman of the Income and Family Support Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.

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