A letter to our new president
By Susanne L. King, M.D.
Berkshire Eagle
Wednesday, November 19
Dear President-elect Obama:
As you prepare to begin your presidency during a period of severe recession, you will be searching to make financially sound decisions for our country. You have promised to reform the health care system, and only one solution will enable you to create an effective system and save money: a single-payer national health program.
During your campaign, you proposed a health plan to extend coverage to the 45 million uninsured Americans by expanding private and public programs, with the help of federal subsidies and mandates. This will only add to the cost of our health insurance system, currently a hefty $7,129 per person. However, if we adopt a single-payer national health program rather than attempting to expand our dysfunctional multiple payer, private insurance system, we would save money.
Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, health care researchers at Harvard Medical School, have calculated that the United States could save $350 billion/year by adopting a single-payer national health program. A single-payer program would eliminate private insurance companies and the enormous expense of their administrative costs and profits.
Every other industrialized country in the world has a national health plan that covers everyone and is administered by the government. And other countries spend less than half as much per person on health care as we do in the United States. One reason they are able to provide health care for everyone for much less money is because their administrative costs are a small fraction of the costs in our country.
A single-payer national health program would also be a real boon to individuals faced with rapidly rising health insurance costs, and would rescue people who are falling into bankruptcy and are losing their homes because of medical debts. American automakers might not need bailouts if they didn’t have to provide insurance for their workers and retirees. Small businesses would no longer shoulder the expense and administrative burden of providing health insurance for their workers.
Not only would we save money for the government, business, and the individual, but a single-payer national health program would also cover everyone, and we would all have access to more comprehensive benefits. These benefits would include medical care, mental health care, dental care, prescription drugs, and long-term care, which is a primary concern for the baby boomers who have been watching their life savings and retirement funds evaporate with the collapse of Wall Street.
A group of 15,000 U.S. doctors in the organization Physicians for a National Health Program have called on you to enact a single-payer program. A Massachusetts poll revealed that 64 percent of doctors support single-payer health care, and the American College of Physicians has voted its support for a national health program as well.
As a Massachusetts resident, I am witnessing an attempt at health care reform that has similarities to your proposed plan, and is being touted as a model for our country. This program has expanded health insurance coverage to people who were previously uninsured, but it is not economically sustainable for our state government or for individuals. Many people are unhappy with the current health insurance program in Massachusetts, which has not reduced rapidly rising premium costs, co-payments and deductibles for the working individual. Massachusetts residents who were able to vote on local ballot initiatives in their legislative districts on Nov. 4, supported single-payer health care by landslide margins. Opinion polls also show that two-thirds of the public supports this kind of reform.
You have a mandate from the American people, and from many doctors and other health care professionals who actually provide our care. You have the opportunity to seize this moment of economic crisis, and create financially sound, sustainable health care reform. As Dr. Quentin Young, a long-time single-payer advocate, has said, “Adopting a nationwide single-payer system will build on the great achievement of Medicare, further unify our people, strengthen our country’s economic competitiveness and assure President Obama’s legacy as an American hero.”
Susanne L. King is a Lenox-based practitioner.