Time to fight for new health system
By Dr. William Davidson Jr.
Lebanon Daily News (PA)
December 17, 2008
This year America will spend $2.4 trillion on health care, well more than $7,000 for every man, woman and child existing within our borders. Thirty years ago the price tag was less than $1,000 per person, but then there were no CAT scans or MRIs, and laparoscopic surgery was in its infancy.
Yes, the incredible expansion in technology that has created the miracles of modern medicine has also produced a huge economic burden such that one-third of our taxes now go to pay for health care. Were that money used wisely and efficiently then perhaps the burden would not seem so onerous.
Unfortunately, only 70 cents of every dollar paid into the system actually returns to us in the form of health care. Thirty cents out of every dollar goes to administer a very dysfunctional system that has become a profit center for special interests that do not have the best interests of our people at heart.
Thirty years ago when the price tag was affordable, very few of the players in the system were getting rich off of it. Insurance companies were truly “nonprofit.” The pharmaceutical industry had acceptable profits, and health-care providers didn’t need advertising agencies and marketing specialists.
While technology is here to stay, we cannot afford to tolerate those who exploit the system to the tune of $300 billion a year. That’s right. If we eliminate the private medical-insurance industry, group-negotiate the price of medicines and make patient care the primary focus of health care providers, we could provide health care for everyone at an affordable price. Only a single-payer, publicly financed and privately delivered system can accomplish such a feat.
To implement such a change, the American people will need to send a clear message to our legislators. In order for the people to speak with a clear voice they must grow wise to the propaganda that has distracted and divided them in the past.
- For instance, is providing health care to everyone a communist plot or simply a good idea that appeals to everyone of good will?
- Do we understand that as in Canada, where most of the care is delivered by private physicians, a single-payer system here would give everyone his choice of privately practicing physicians and hospitals?
- Do we allow the pharmaceutical industry to hold us hostage with exorbitant prices or do we group-negotiate with them like the Veterans Administration, who gets medicines for 40 percent less?
- Do we accept the mantra that raising taxes is always a negative, or do we look at the bottom line that shows that after eliminating premiums, co-pays, deductibles, etc., most of us will pay less than they do now?
- Do we accept the lies about waiting lines causing premature deaths in other countries or examine the facts that show their medical outcomes are no worse than ours while their elderly live longer and their infants are healthier?
- Do we accept that the loss of a job means you lose your medical insurance and go bankrupt, or do we provide a system like the rest of the industrialized world where employment is not connected to health insurance, and being stuck in a dead-end job because of “health benefits” is no longer necessary?
- Do we remember that the discoveries of penicillin and the polio vaccine were made by men driven by the love of science and humanity rather than the pursuit of wealth as the free market advocates would have us believe?
- Do we accept the notion that the government can’t do anything right or let it be the insurance company with a 3 percent (Medicare) overhead or stay with Blue Cross and Aetna and their 20 percent overhead, multimillion dollar CEOs and “pre-existing conditions?”
Even now, the medical insurance industry is hard at work to control the dialogue concerning health-care reform in this country. Any discussion that leaves out single-payer will, in essence, leave out middle America. The choice is ours, but the longer we delay the more we suffer.
Davidson is a partner in Lebanon Cardiology Associates.