Consumer Watchdog to Obama: Open Medicare to All...( SANTA MONICA Calif. Dec. ...),Health

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The nationally recognized Consumer Watchdog sent a letter today to President-elect Obama urging him to fulfill his campaign pledge to make health care affordable and available by allowing any American to join Medicare, regardless of age. The group warned Obama that a proposal pushed by health insurance companies to require all Americans to buy private health insurance policies "amounts only to a government-funded customer delivery system for the fragmented, wasteful private insurance market."

Download the letter at: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/ObamaHealthCareLetter.pdf

In the letter, Consumer Watchdog wrote:

"Patients, employers and the American economy simply cannot continue to pay so much more for health care and receive so much less than anywhere else in the world. Your campaign commitments to make health care affordable and available must not be undermined by those in the medical-insurance complex who seek to preserve their cash cows at the expense of the public."

Consumer Watchdog said that giving all Americans the option of joining Medicare would make health care more affordable and available because such a move would provide the broadest and cheapest sharing of risk while reducing private insurance company waste, fraud and profiteering that accounts for up to half of every dollar Americans spend on health care premiums.

Consumer Watchdog wrote President-elect Barack Obama that, "[t]he critical missing component in your commendable health care proposal is significant controls on health care costs and tough regulatory restrictions on the health insurance industry."

The letter provides three critical recommendations for health care reform: