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Posted on February 20, 2009

Former journalist crusading for affordable health care

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Health care activist visits Fort Collins

BY PAT FERRIER
Fort Collins Coloradoan
February 7, 2009

T.R. Reid is uncharacteristically angry.

He’s angry the richest country in the world cannot provide efficient, affordable health care to all its residents.

He’s angry the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 37th for the cost, quality and coverage of its health-care system.

And, he’s angry the U.S. health-care system has failed the roughly 47 million Americans who lack health insurance.

Reid, a journalist and author, has lived and worked in England and Japan, experiencing firsthand their health-care systems.

He shares those experiences and interviews from several other countries in his 2008 PBS documentary “Sick Around the World,” and his upcoming “Sick Around America” that will air March 21 on PBS.

On Feb. 19 he will be in Fort Collins to discuss the U.S. health care system and its need for substantive and sweeping changes.

He’s come to the consensus that to create an efficient and fair health-care system that covers everyone, the payment system has to be nonprofit.

“If you have for-profit health insurance as we have today, insurance companies do their best not to cover anyone who might need their product,” he said.

“They employ armies of underwriters to deny claims. It’s cheaper for them to write a letter denying a claim than paying it.”

Like any other publicly held company, the mission of for-profit insurance companies is to pay a dividend to their stockholders, he said. “In other countries … it’s to pay for health care. It’s a fundamental difference between us and everyone else.”

As long as the U.S. relies on existing for-profit health insurance companies, the health-care system can’t work, he said.

Reid, a former bureau chief for the Washington Post stationed in Denver, is well-known for his commentaries on National Public Radio from England and Japan.

He spends much of his time now writing books and making documentaries.

Health care became an interest when he lived in Japan and “got marvelous health care. The bills were so small I thought they just dropped a couple of zeroes by mistake.

“In Britain, we’d call the doctor and say the kid has an earache; the doctor would come to the house, treat the kid and walk out the door, and there’s no bill.

“I’m looking at the two countries saying how come they can do this and the U.S., the richest country in the world, can’t do this?

“I am so angry about the U.S. health-care system. It is shocking what these insurance companies do to people.”

Dr. Janet Seeley, a Fort Collins physician who invited Reid to Fort Collins, said most physicians agree health care in the U.S. needs a major overhaul, but they can’t agree on what form that overhaul should take.

Reid breaks health care around the world into four models, each less expensive and more expansive than the U.S., which spends between 18 and 25 percent of its costs on administration.

Canada, Britain and Japan spend 5 percent and Japan spends 3 percent on administrative costs, he said.

“Our current private health insurance is the cruelest and most expensive in the world. Unless we go after that, we can’t fix it.”

Reid worries the Obama administration, which had hoped to tackle health-care reform in its first 100 days, will get derailed by an economy in shambles and billions of dollars diverted into stimulus packages.

“If a new president takes it on early during the honeymoon period when he still has the political mandate, it’s probably the best time. I’m worried Obama won’t get to it soon enough.”
Additional Facts

Journalist, author, commentator and documentary filmmaker T.R. Reid

The PBS/Frontline film “Sick Around the World” can be viewed at www.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/sick aroundtheworld

“Sick Around America,” will air March 31 on PBS.