An open letter to Sen. Bingaman about the shameful AMA and bait/switchy 'co-op" plans

Dear Sen.Bingaman's DC Staff-

Thanks for making time for our NM Alliance for Retired Americans unscheduled visit last week in DC. Our 400+ statewide and 3.5 million national members appreciate yours and Senator Bingaman's hard work for real health reform.

We want him to keep it up, and know that we're doing our part out here. Especially as the ground is getting weak with corporate interests, including the AMA, who shamefully opposed the creation of Medicare in 1965. They made a historic mistake then and they are making one now by opposing a strong Public Health Plan. Our Senator must not follow their lead and enable this mistake again...we need a strong Public Health Plan now.

I'm an epidemiologist and former NM DOH worker, but I'm now helping to lead our local NM ARA because health reform can't wait any longer. New Mexicans are dying in discriminatory patterns, and it's nearly all preventable with a sound Public Health Plan.

I've made a career of analyzing local health access and financing trends here in NM and I can tell you, first hand, that the co-op option will have no teeth to place corporate health insurance interests where they belong for the health of the people: ultimately, in a supplemental role.

We don't trust fire fighting or policing to corporations, so why should we trust them with health care gate-keeping and disease prevention/management? There is no science to back this fatal error up, just money and smoke and mirrors. International comparative health systems research bears this out time and again - the US is the biggest rationer of the poorest quality of care of all our national peers.

Please tell the Senator to be strong for our people, and we'll do the same.

Love,
Terry