The Hightower Report

FACTS FOR ACTION ON HEALTH CARE

Widely reported fact No. 1: Our country faces a growing health-care crisis that leaves 47 million Americans with no health insurance – an increase of 7 million people since the year 2000.

Little-reported related fact: The health-care crisis not only affects the uninsured but also the growing number of insured families that find themselves paying more and more money for policies that deliver less and less care. Out-of-pocket costs for health coverage are skyrocketing – some 61 million Americans are now in families that will spend more than 10% of their incomes on medical costs this year, according to a recent report by Families USA, a nonpartisan advocacy group. That's a jump of nearly 20 million people since 2000, and the vast majority of them has insurance. More astonishing is the finding that nearly 18 million Americans are in families now paying more than 25% of their incomes on health costs.

Widely reported fact No. 2: Credit-card debt continues to pile upon the backs of American families, and there's now a worrisome surge in the number of serious delinquencies and defaults.

Little-reported related fact: More and more financially squeezed families have been paying their ever-rising health-care bills with their credit cards.

These interrelated facts explain why American voters are telling pollsters and politicians that access to affordable health care is their No. 1 domestic concern in this year's elections. Not only does a large majority want the federal government to guarantee every American has health coverage, but 60% of the people say they are willing to pay higher taxes to get it done.

For information and action on health-care reform, call Families USA: 202/628-3030.

PAYING THE PRICE FOR NAFTA

New Year's Day is normally considered a harbinger of hope, but this new year dawned as a day of dread for hundreds of thousands of small farmers just to the south of our border with Mexico.

Their unease is the product of their real-life experience with the North American Free Trade Agreement – the corporate-generated trade scam that Mexico's ruling elite had promised would be a boon for that country's rural people. The promised boon was a bust. Fifteen years after NAFTA was approved, some 3 million Mexicans have lost their farms or their farm jobs, 19 million more Mexicans have been added to the country's poverty rolls, and millions have had to leave their homeland and cross into the U.S. to try to lift their families from abject poverty. Of the 400,000 Mexican people who migrate to our country each year, 80% are from rural areas.

NAFTA did have one safety valve in it, however. Corn and beans – which are economically and culturally the two most important Mexican crops – were protected for 15 years from a deluge of exports that would otherwise have come from subsidized corporate farms in the U.S. On Jan. 1, that protection expired, and the full corporate arrogance of NAFTA is about to come down on the remaining small farmers of Mexico.

Corn and beans have been both a staple dish and an essential part of Mexico's identity since the Aztecs. Now, Mexicans will be made dependent on Cargill, ConAgra, and other U.S. exporters for these basics. Many more Mexican farms and farm jobs will be lost – and additional hundreds of thousands of Mexican people will have no choice but to head north.

If we are ever to deal with the waves of illegal Mexican immigrants in our country, we must stop looking down at the hordes of desperate people crossing over – and instead start looking up at the corporate elites in both countries. It's their insider, self-serving deals like NAFTA that are causing this mass displacement.