Nurses are tired of seeing patients left behind
By PHYLLIS BROWN
Napa Valley Register
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
While Michael Bartos is right that the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans need help (“Single-payer won’t work, but universal care is the goal,” Oct. 2), his opposition to a single-payer style, Medicare-for-all that would guarantee healthcare for all is simply an embrace of our dysfunctional status quo and a broken healthcare system that primarily benefits insurance companies at the expense of the rest of us.
Registered nurses sponsored the billboard on Highway 80 that Bartos cites precisely because we are tired of seeing our patients left behind; infants who can’t get a healthy start because mom can’t afford prenatal care, children who can’t get immunizations and proper dental care because mom and dad can’t afford it, and patients who can’t afford the medications they’ve been prescribed. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Single-payer healthcare, as would be established by HR 676 in Congress and SB 840 in California, is the only effective, genuine cure for our current healthcare nightmare. It is the only health reform that is universal, that assures uniform, comprehensive benefits for all, that guarantees patients’ choice of doctor or medical facility, and that ends the routine, callous denial of care by insurance companies. It’s also the only reform that restores health security for American families by bringing an end to ever-rising insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and rising drug and hospital charges.
While Bartos’ experiences with Medicare are unfortunate, they remain unique and anecdotal. The majority of private practitioners who experience difficulty in being paid for services rendered are battling not with Medicare, but with insurance companies. The heart of the claims problem is that insurance companies aim to make a profit. Medicare doesn’t. Insurance companies earn profits by denying payment, therefore, the more payment denied, the greater the profits. Insurance companies have an operating overhead of 30 percent, Medicare, 3 percent. Medicare exists to serve the healthcare needs of American citizens. Insurance companies exist to create attractive portfolios for their stockholders.
We’ve all heard the same tired anecdotes about waiting times in countries with more humane health care systems but studies show that waiting times in the U.S. are as bad as, or worse than, Canada. Unlike the U.S., in Canada no one is denied needed medical care, referrals or diagnostic tests due to cost, preexisting conditions or because it wasn’t pre-approved.
Proponents of preserving market-based healthcare like Dr. Bartos ignore the colossal failure of the system that is collapsing around us. It’s all well and good to talk about public subsidies for our lowest income, but a mountain of evidence is accumulating to document that the crisis now touches more American families every day.
A recent survey by the influential Consumer Reports organization, for example, states that four in 10 Americans can now be classified as “underinsured.” Among those, more than half of the “underinsured” postponed needed medical care due to cost and a third had to dig deep into their savings to pay for medical expenses. Another third of those over 50 said decisions about their retirement were adversely affected by healthcare costs, one quarter had outstanding medical debt, 38 percent postponed home or car maintenance repairs due to medical bills, and only 37 percent said they were prepared to financially handle unexpected major medical costs in the next year.
The point of “Sicko,” and the nurses’ endorsement of the movie, is that the people who live in the wealthiest nation in the world deserve the same standard of care that exists in all of the world’s other industrialized countries. America is a society founded upon the principle of equality, but the message sent by our current healthcare system, or lack thereof, is that you are only entitled to the healthcare you can afford. By redefining health as a commodity, as we have in this nation, we are restricting that fundamental right.
(Brown is a registered nurse who lives in Napa.)