Marion County Democratic Party Resolution 2009-00002: To Support Healthcare Reform Meeting Certain Criteria

Marion County Democratic Party Resolution 2009-00002
To Support Healthcare Reform Meeting Certain Criteria
August 1, 2009
The Marion County Democratic Party believes that Healthcare in the United States is declining in quality and fails to serve too many citizens. We believe that it is essential that we take steps to both improve the quality of our National Healthcare System and expand coverage to all people living within the borders of the United States. We further believe that such a plan will be affordable and sustainable if a form of Government Sponsored Insurance is made available to all U. S. Citizens that will cause insurance companies to improve the quality of service to match the efficiency of the Government provided plan. Healthcare costs are currently almost 17% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States and growing at an unsustainable rate. We rank 16th in infant mortality among industrialized nations. We are spending more on healthcare than any other nation, but many nations spending far less per person cover all their citizens, enjoy a better quality of health and far exceed our current life expectancy.
We hereby RESOLVE to support Healthcare Reform in the United States that institutes the following criteria:
1. Safer and more efficient use of prescription drugs. A national computer system; which gives the prescribing physician information about the appropriateness of each dose for each patient based on the age, height, weight, sex, renal function, liver function, DNA of the patient, drug interactions, allergies, and diagnosis of the patient; must be created and made available to all healthcare practitioners .
2. The National Healthcare System must use hospital resources more efficiently by providing more nursing staff per admitted patient, and strict regulation of the hospitals’ policies covering changes in staff levels that place patients at greater risk. The system must place more of the healthcare decisions in the hands of physicians and other health care professionals. The System must place fewer healthcare decisions on managers who are not medical professionals because the current tendency is for healthcare managers to put corporate profit ahead of patient safety. The System must place fewer decisions in the hands of insurance providers because the current tendency is for insurance companies to put corporate profit ahead of patient safety.
3. The System must use Physician, Nursing, Radiological, Emergency Medical, Pharmacy, Nutritional and other trained and licensed personnel more efficiently by placing the greater rewards for improved quality of life for patients rather than rewards for solely reacting to patients’ symptoms. The rewards should be based on successfully intervening to prevent adverse drug reactions by screening each new medication for appropriateness of each dose, to prevent diabetic complications, to encourage appropriate lifestyle changes such as attaining ideal body mass, reducing use of addictive substances, and to reduce exposure to tobacco and other carcinogens.
4. We believe that insurance companies have proven they cannot successfully deliver quality healthcare to our citizens and prefer a simple single payer system, based on the Medicare model, run by the Government of our country; remembering that we have no vote in the policies of insurance companies, but we do each possess a voice in our government. However, we are willing to allow health insurance to exist in competition with the government system.
5. The System must reduce our percentage of healthcare costs to at least 8% of Gross Domestic Product and make our businesses and industries more competitive with all nations that provide universal healthcare to their citizens.
6. The System must improve the quality of life for U.S. Citizens. U.S. life expectancy must equal that of Japan (81.2 years); an increase from our current 78.1 years. The system must reduce our infant mortality rate to equal that of Japan (2.8 per 1000 live births) from our current 6.2 per 1000 live births.
7. The System must cause pharmaceutical companies to charge their American patients the same lower cost as other countries. Currently Canadian medications cost approximately 50% of the cost of the same medication in the United States.
8. The System must seek to reduce the waste of precious lives and dollars lost to the current inefficient healthcare of our great country.

The people of this country deserve better healthcare and universal insurance for all its citizens.
Therefore, we the Members of the Democratic Party in Marion County Tennessee hereby RESOLVE to support the Healthcare Reform which meets the above criteria.
We further RESOLVE to send copies of this resolution to our Congressman, Lincoln Davis, our Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker; to Governor Phil Bredesen; to our State Representative, Bill Harmon; to our State Senator Andy Berke; and to The Marion County Republican Party, and we request all of the above to support the goal of the very best, most comprehensive, and universally available healthcare system for the citizens of the United States of America, regardless of party affiliation, religion, race, sex, or creed.
So ADOPTED and RESOLVED this date, August 1, 2009.