A single-payer plan would take greed out of the health-care business
By Wayne Madsen
Arizona Daily Star
05.11.2009
Americans finally are starting to realize what citizens in other advanced democracies took for granted decades ago: Private health insurance is a shopworn relic from a bygone era when few people could afford quality medical care.
In an ideal world, Congress would have passed a government-administered universal health-care system when it was first introduced by Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., in 1945. When the congressman died in 1954, his son John D. Dingell Jr. won his seat in a special election and has introduced his father’s National Health Insurance legislation at the start of each new Congress.
Unfortunately, the Dingells’ clear vision thus far has been the victim of powerful interests — physicians organized under the banner of the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical industry and, of course, the nation’s private health insurers.
All profit immensely from the present system, which has ratcheted up costs to the point where the United States now spends twice as much on health care as other industrialized countries — $7,129 for every man, woman and child.
While the other advanced nations provide excellent medical coverage for all of their citizens, our nation falls shamefully short. More than 47 million Americans — including 9 million children — have no health-care insurance.
The two major reasons for this gaping disparity between consumer spending and actual services are the inefficiencies inherent in a system that involves thousands of delivery agents and, sadly, outright greed.
The vast private insurance bureaucracy and the forests of paperwork they produce vociferously consume 31 cents of every health-care dollar consumers shell out, according to the advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program.
Funneling that money into a single system run by the federal government would save more than $350 billion per year — more than enough to provide comprehensive health care of the highest quality for all Americans.
Some experts believe that the savings from eliminating the pervasive greed in the current system might double that amount although they acknowledge there’s no way to calculate that.
One of the major problems with private insurers is their desire for ever-rising profits means they have little incentive to insure people with prior health conditions — those that are already sick or have had a bout with a serious illness like cancer.
A friend of mine — some eight years cancer-free after breast surgery — constantly receives letters from her insurer asking her to fill out a comprehensive survey on her overall medical condition. She wisely declines each opportunity because she believes the insurers are trolling cancer survivors looking for any excuse to cancel current policies and deny applications for new ones.
Ironically, it appears that President Obama and congressional health-care leader Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., may be about to give the insurers the type of reform they have spent millions of dollars lobbying for — despite their posturing as champions of rational change.
The proposal by America’s Health Insurance Plans would mandate that the federal government force everyone to purchase private health insurance. All Americans would be covered under this scheme, but the feds would step in and subsidize those with health risks that are extremely costly to treat.
The idea is to continue to let private health insurers reap obscene profits and continue to make large campaign contributions to compliant candidates.
It reminds one of the classic line from “The Leopard,” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s great novel about the unification of Italy in the 1860s: “If we want things to stay as they are, they will have to change.”
Rather than retaining the notorious Capitol Hill sleight-of-hand that delivers cash-filled envelopes, Americans should push for a single-payer system like the ones currently enjoyed by Canadians and most Europeans.
Under such a system, all Americans would be covered for virtually every medical expense and regain the once cherished right of freely choosing their doctors and hospitals.
That, indeed, would be revolutionary reform: one that marches under the banner of “Patients before Profits.”