Single payer plan the only solution that will work
By Dorothy Sistrom
Opinion
The Register Guard
Thursday, Jul 30, 2009
Our health care system has failed. Church Women United of Eugene/Springfield has endorsed “single payer” health care for America. We have asked our members to contact our congressional representatives and the president to support House Resolution 676 and Senate Bill 703.
Our Church Women United board believes the biblical imperative to heal the sick and to serve the least of us and the call for the common good demand a single payer system where everyone receives health care. We agree with the resolution on health care reform by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that “Every person has the right to adequate health care. This right flows from the sanctity of human life and the dignity of all persons, who are made in the image of God.”
A single payer plan such as HR 676 takes health care out of the hands of profit-driven insurance plans and puts it in the hands of a public agency such as the one that runs Medicare so efficiently. Medicare operates with overhead costs of less than 3 percent, compared with 30 percent in private insurance plans. By doing so patient care and health care come before insurance company profit.
Under HR 676 every resident is covered, regardless of income, job status, age or health status. You may have your choice of doctor without co-payments, deductibles or premiums. All health care services are covered: hospital stays, doctor visits, lowered prescription costs, mental health, long term care, dental care. A doctor, not the insurance companies, will be in charge of your care. Every person will receive a national health card.
Who will pay for this? If we were living in any other industrial country, our current taxes would have paid for it. American taxpayers already pay more than 60 percent of our health care costs, and this is twice the amount needed to pay for those sick in other countries. HR 676 would eliminate spending to private insurers and reduce out-of-pocket costs to consumers by 75 percent.
To replace current sources, revenue is needed: a modest 4.5 percent employer payroll tax and a 3.3 percent employee tax (average workers now pay 24 percent of their health care insurance premium). There would also be a 5 percent health tax on the top 5 percent of income earners and a 10 percent tax on the top 1 percent, plus a 0.1 percent tax on stock and bond transfers as well as a repeal of the tax cut for the highest 1 percent of income earners. Savings will amount to $350 billion in the first year due to reduced administration and marketing costs, removal of for-profit interests, and bulk purchasing of drugs.
Single payer is not socialized medicine. Doctors and hospitals can remain in private practice. You can choose your own doctor or health care provider, without having an insurance company limit your choice. Providers will send claims to one national office using one accepted form, not the thousands of forms required by insurance companies today.
Our current U.S. health care system is too expensive and inefficient, and leaves 47 million people with no health care and 80 million underinsured. Every day, 14,000 workers lose their employee health care. Despite the fact that we spend twice as much for health care as any other industrialized country (equal to 16 percent of all goods and services), we have a lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality. Thirty cents of every U.S. health care dollar go toward insurance paperwork, marketing and profits, not health care. The more than 1,000 insurance companies involved have different plans, rules and reimbursement plans. Doctors’ offices and hospitals must hire more clerical workers than nurses to manage the complex paperwork.
The United States is the only advanced country in the world without universal health care, and as a consequence 101,000 die every year.
Physicians for a National Health Program endorses HR 676. Spokesperson David Himmelstein, M.D., of Harvard Medical School and Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen featured on the May 22 “Bill Moyer’s Journal” on PBS argued that passage of anything but a single payer plan will bankrupt the United States. Such a plan will save $400 billion a year ($4 trillion over 10 years). They cited the Canadian system as an excellent model where everyone is covered and can choose their own care-givers. They acknowledge there must be some restrictions or delays in receiving nonemergency procedures. Americans are far more likely to forgo treatment because they can’t afford it, and 40 percent fail to fill prescriptions because of costs. Canadians have care regardless of employment, illness, disability or rising costs.
The health insurance industry routinely spends half a billion dollars per year lobbying Congress and currently is spending $1.4 million a day against a single payer or a public option. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden was among the top 10 percent of the health care industry’s beneficiaries of campaign contributions ($1.4 million). Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, current chairman of the Senate Finance committee, received the third largest campaign support. Neither senator favors a single payer plan. In fact, Baucus has refused to schedule a committee hearing on HR 676 or SB 703 saying he “won’t waste time debating a plan which Congress cannot pass.” President Obama received $19 million in campaign contributions from the health industry.
We must act immediately. Call your congressmen and the president: Sen. Ron Wyden, 431-0229; Sen. Jeff Merkley, 465-6750; Rep. Peter DeFazio, 465-6732; President Obama, (202) 456-1414. Tell your friends and relatives to call and join us in demanding HR 676, the U.S. national health insurance “Improved Medicare for All” plan.
Dorothy Sistrom is co-president of Church Women United.
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