Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

But New Mexico’s senior senator says the bill isn’t perfect and he will push for the inclusion of a public option

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., is praising a new health care reform proposal being circulated in Washington that does not include a public option, but he says he will push for public option to be added to the bill.

Bingaman said the proposal from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is a “big step forward toward ensuring health care for all Americans.”

However, Bingaman said, “That is not to say this bill is perfect.  For example, I believe it should have a public option, and I will support its inclusion when we vote on this bill in committee.”

A key player on both the Senate Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Bingaman said Baucus’ bill meets many of the goals of other lawmakers in Washington on which there is general agreement.

“For example, it allows people to keep the coverage they have, but with more stability and security in part because insurance companies would no longer be allowed to deny coverage to Americans for pre-existing medical conditions. It expands coverage to those who do not have it, and it reduces the costs of health insurance for families and businesses,” Bingaman said in a news release. “Not only doesn’t this bill add to the deficit, it also cuts health care costs in the long run, reducing the suffocating burden of health care costs on our economy projected for the future.”

Baucus’ plan is estimated to cost $856 Billion dollars over 10 years. See this video for details:

Bingaman said the bill should make coverage more affordable for working families, and he believes it “moves the process ahead significantly, and I congratulate the chairman for his hard work and for his proposal.”

Nearly 500K New Mexicans have no health insurance

Also on Wednesday, the White House press office released Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ analysis of last week’s numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau regarding the uninsured nationwide, including in New Mexico.

Sebelius said the U.S. health care system has reached a breaking point.

“The status quo is unsustainable, and continuing to delay reform is not an option. These numbers only serve to further confirm a reality that far too many American families live with every day,” she said.

The report revealed that about 31 percent of non-elderly adults in the state lack some sort of private health care coverage.

That percentage translates into 468,000 adults in 2008, up from 363,000 in 2001, according to the Census report. Those numbers do not include people who’ve lost their insurance after being laid off this year due to the economy.

The new chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, Javier Gonzales, released a statement on Wednesday saying the new statistics are alarming.

“The current health insurance system is simply unsustainable, not only because of the rising number of uninsured, but because of the sky-rocketing costs of health care which are crushing families, businesses and local governments and the instability of the system, which leaves everyone, even people with health insurance, at risk of losing their coverage,” Gonzales said.

Nationwide, the number of uninsured increased from 39.8 million in 2001 to 46.3 million in 2008.

The percentage of people with employer-based coverage also decreased, from 57.3 percent of the population in 2001 to 53.4 percent in 2008. The report also reveals that more workers — some 281,000 people employed both full and part time — in New Mexico are not receiving any health insurance at the workplace. That’s a jump from 26.9 percent in 2001 to 31.4 percent.

Those numbers include 9,000 people from high-income households who are now uninsured.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a report showing the cost of private health care premiums is far outpacing the growth in employee wages.

“Over the last 10 years, premiums have increased by 131 percent, while wages have grown 38 percent and inflation has grown 28 percent,” Sebelius said. “In states across the country we’ve seen the health care coverage situation go from bad to worse. And it’s clear that losing insurance isn’t a problem that plagues only the poor or the unemployed — it could happen to anyone.”