Mike Garman is old fashioned, in the best sense of the word. He’s the type that stands when a lady comes to the table. And his Democratic values are old fashioned: he enthusiastically believes that we’re all in this together. Health care is his biggest issue–and always has been. Jobs are his second biggest concern.
Maybe some people equate old fashioned with corny. In his case, they’d be wrong. What he is, is genuine. You should see his face light up when he starts talking about health care.
Garman’s concern about health care is understandable, since he is 6th District Director of the Saint Charles Ambulance District and specializes in urgent care diagnostic imaging for Saint Johns Mercy Health Systems. What that means in practice is that he sees thousands of patients a year, and he sees how many of them are concerned about not being able to pay for the care they need. The real challenge of his job, often, is figuring out how to work the system so that such people get the care they need.
In fact, just such a situation was perhaps the impetus toward getting him into politics. He knocked on some 3,000 doors a couple of years ago as part of his job. He was surveying St. Charles residents, asking them what they thought of the EMS care and what, if anything, the city could do to improve it. One of the first people he talked to was a woman who had Medicare D, the government drug prescription program. She had been doing fine until she hit that $2500 donut hole and couldn’t pay for her prescriptions. Her ankles were swollen to the size of soccer balls. Using some of his contacts as a health care provider, Garman was able to arrange for the woman to get her meds until the end of the year.
Sure, he can give you all the statistics you want about the health care crisis in this country: How we spend $2.9 trillion a year on health care–16 percent of our GDP–and we could cut that cost by a third. How Medicare spends only 2 1/2 to 3 percent of its budget on administrative costs, whereas insurance companies spend 20-25 percent on that because there are so many companies, and each one has administrators duplicating the work done by the administrators in every other company. How insurance companies make $60 billion a year in profits. He knows all the data, and he has plenty of ideas about how to correct it, starting with single payer.
But first and foremost, he just empathizes with the father of a boy who’s broken his arm and who can’t pay. Certainly, hospitals must provide care when a boy walks in with a broken arm, but the follow up care is another matter. Garman helps children he sees who are in that kind of fix, and the more often he helps them, the more incensed he becomes that health care is not a right in this country.
He wants to go to Congress and become the squeakiest wheel ever to grate and screak on the legislature’s collective ear.
I’ll have more to say about Garman tomorrow. Meanwhile, let me point out that his kickoff fundraiser will be Dec. 17th at McGurk’s Public House at 108 S. Main in O’Fallon. It’s from 5:30 to 8:00, and the recommended minimum donation is $25.
but he is in for a tough battle if the centerpiece of his campaign is a push for single-payer health care.
Medicare has premiums, it is a far cry from socialism, but the program is administered by the government at a 3% administrative cost not by private insurance carriers at 25%. Part B and D are available either through the Medicare System or through private supplements. A single payer will lower health costs not raise them and everyone will be insured with basic coverage that includes wellness, dental, optical and as you get older the ability to hear. You are right about one thing the insurance companies will send Akin millions, because Garman is right!