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n~i~ya Page 4 of 16 week, to avoid having to pay for employee healthcare benefits under PHCA. Even well-insured individuals are experiencing problems with their health maintenance organizations and insurance companies denying, or very reluctantly dispensing, expensive medicines and treatments. A 2005 national study by Harvard University found that about half of all bankruptcy filings are partly due medical expenses, and most people who file for bankruptcy protection because of medical problems have health insurance. The legislature further finds that Canada has for many years had a tried, tested, and true universal publicly administered healthcare- for-all healthcare insurance model with one payout agency for caregivers and providers. A variation of this very successful system adapted to meet the unique conditions in Hawaii would be very beneficial for the following reasons: (1) For union members and their employers, it means taking healthcare off the negotiating table; (2) For patients, as taxpayers and insurance premium-payers, it means significant reductions in overall costs, increases in benefits, and the slowing of annual inflation cost increases. It also means a transition from increasingly uncaring profit-driven healthcare to the restoration of human-need driven mutually respectful and caring patient- doctor-nurse-and other caregiver relationships, which in earlier times were fundamental to meaningful healthcare; (3) For businesses, large and small, it reduces significant overhead expenses; (4) For the local economy, it means keeping almost all http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2007/Bills/HB 1598_.htm 1/9/2008