Doctor cites support for changing system
By D.R. Bahlman
Berkshire Eagle Staff
Monday, December 16, 2002
PITTSFIELD -- Support for a single-payer health care insurance system appears to be gaining among health care providers in Berkshire County, according to a survey conducted by a Great Barrington physician.
Dr. David Lippman said that, of those who responded to his survey of all practicing physicians in the county, 86 percent stated that they might favor a single-payer system. The survey was sent to members of the Berkshire District Medical Society; he could not provide exact figures about the numbers of surveys sent out or returned. He noted that many of the county's health care providers were not surveyed because they are not on the rolls of the medical society, which has about 200 members. He also said that a wide range of opinions were expressed.
"Some said they wanted the government out of it entirely," he said.
Lippman and other members of MassCare, a statewide organization that advocates for a single-payer "universal" health care system, note that Massachusetts residents pay the highest health care costs in the nation -- 30 percent above the national average per person, according to a 2000 study by two Boston University researchers -- and that a single-payer system would reduce those costs substantially.
"The whole state will pay less for health care under a system that will cover every single person in the state," said Jean Dillard of Lenox, a nurse who is a member of MassCare. "If such a system had been instituted in 2000, the state would have saved approximately $1.2 billion in that year alone."
Citing the BU study, Dillard declared that "the biggest things we're paying for now are administrative costs and the million-dollar salaries of CEOs of insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies."
Under a single-payer system, said Dillard, "you could forget those costs, forget the costs of advertising that those companies and some hospitals and some doctors do, forget about costs of the bodily injury coverage in auto and homeowners' insurance policies and the bodily injury portion of Workers' Compensation."
Citing statistics indicating that between 400,000 and 600,000 Massachusetts residents are currently without health insurance coverage, Dillard acknowledged that there would be a cost associated with entitling them to such coverage, "but they all won't be sick at once."
A "two-tier" system that combines state-funded universal health care with private health care-cost indemnity coverage wouldn't work, said Dillard.
"The 'healthy-wealthy' will have the private coverage and that will leave all the expenses for the sick and poor," she said. "The state has got to be the insurer."
Lippman said that the benefits of a single-payer system also include uniformity of fees for service.
"It's embarrassing that [universal access to government-funded health care] isn't available in the world's wealthiest nation. There's something about medicine and something about money that's like oil and water: They don't mix," he said.