August 26, 2010
Dear Colleague,
We write to invite you to attend the Annual Meeting of Physicians for a National Health Program on Saturday, November 6, in Denver, Colorado. It will be preceded by our popular Leadership Training course, starting at 1 p.m. on Friday, November 5.
Both events will be held at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, 1550 Court Place, Denver. Reserve a room directly by calling the hotel at 800-325-3535 and mentioning PNHP ($149 single/double, $125 senior rate) by October 5.
Registration for the Annual Meeting is now available online here. Alternatively, you can print out a copy of the registration form here and mail or fax it in. To register for leadership training (space is limited) please call Matt Petty at 312-782-6006.
The theme of the meeting is “From PPACA to Single Payer: Next Steps for Single Payer Activists in the Wake of the Obama Health Plan” with talks by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now; PNHP co-founders Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler; pharmaceutical industry critics Donald Light, Ph.D., and Dr. Joel Lexchin; Canadian surgeon Dr. Sherif Emil; labor activist Rose Roach; journalist T.R. Reid (“Sick Around the World”); Dr. Claudia Fegan (“Universal health care: What the U.S. can learn from the Canadian experience”); Dr. Margaret Flowers, arrested for protesting the exclusion of single payer by Sen. Baucus; PNHP state single-payer leaders and more.
Help us chart a course for effective single-payer activism in the states and nationally. Last year PNHPers testified before House and Senate committees, spoke at town hall and other meetings on reform from coast to coast, and made numerous media appearances, including on Bill Moyers, Bill Maher, Fox News, CNN, Colbert, Ed Schultz, Democracy Now and more.
Today, state single-payer movements from California to Vermont are taking the lead, even as PNHPers continue to turn up the heat nationally for reform, such as with the recent publication of op-eds calling for expanding and improving Medicare on its 45th birthday, July 30.
With the passage of PPACA, the surge of national media and congressional interest has ebbed, even as the need for fundamental reform continues to grow. As health care costs continue to escalate, it will become increasingly clear that our single-payer proposal is the only effective remedy for the crisis afflicting our health system.
Please join us as we assess the status of the new health law and plan PNHP’s policy and strategy going forward. Feel free to forward this message to your colleagues, as well.
Yours truly,
Quentin Young, M.D.
National Coordinator
Ida Hellander, M.D.
Executive Director
P.S. If you can’t join us in Denver, please consider becoming a meeting supporter. Simply go to our donation page and indicate that you’d like to make a donation to support the Annual Meeting. Your name will be listed in the program book along with other supporters and your tax-deductible donation to PNHP will help assure that the meeting is a success. A donation of $100 or more will entitle you to a free copy of Dr. John Geyman’s excellent new book about the recent health reform “Hijacked: The Road to Single Payer in the Aftermath of Stolen Health Care Reform” (available mid-September).
Rx for Medicare’s birthday: Expand it
By Quentin Young
Chicago Tribune, August 5, 2010
Medicare, one of our nation’s most cherished social programs, turned 45 last week.
I was in active medical practice on July 30, 1965, when Medicare was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Its impact on older Americans and their families was swift and spectacular. I saw the results with my own eyes.
Almost overnight, millions of Americans age 65 and older had the doors to health care opened to them that had hitherto been closed. They streamed into our doctors’ offices seeking long-deferred and sometimes urgently needed medical attention.
Simultaneously, the specter of crushing medical debt was lifted from the shoulders of tens of millions of America’s seniors and their children. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief.
That was only the beginning. Through the years, Medicare dramatically reduced poverty among the elderly. It added new benefits like preventive care. It reduced racial and income-based disparities. It extended its coverage to the severely disabled. It laid the basis for nationwide, comparative health studies that have improved the quality of care for everyone.
In short, Medicare, a government-sponsored program that now covers over 45 million Americans, has been a triumphant success.
However, instead of celebrating, Medicare is facing ominous rumblings from President Obama’s debt commission and not-so-veiled threats from other quarters.
“Medicare’s going broke,” its market-obsessed critics say. “It’s dragging down the economy.”
Such alarms have been sounded about every six or seven years since Medicare began, but in real life it continues to thrive. Either the economy prospers, yielding greater tax revenues, or Congress tweaks the payroll tax by a tiny fraction of a percentage point, and immediately the projected shortfall disappears. (The last adjustment was in 1985, when the rate was increased to 1.45 percent from 1.30 percent.)
While it’s true aging baby boomers will make bigger demands on Medicare, again, modest adjustments today will assure its financial solvency tomorrow.
In fact, Medicare stands like a rock in a troubled sea of waste, inefficiency and disarray in the rest of our health care system, dominated as it is by big, corporate insurers whose paramount goal is to maximize profits, often by enrolling the healthy, avoiding the sick, raising premiums and denying claims.
Medicare is not without its problems, of course. Its benefits package could be richer. It lacks authority to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. The reimbursement rate to physicians could be enhanced and stabilized, instead of depending on an annual cat-and-mouse game with Congress (the “doc fix”) over a flawed accounting formula that only erodes physician confidence in the program.
But the best way to remedy these problems – and to bring down skyrocketing health care costs at the same time – is to improve the program and, most important, to expand it to cover every person in the United States.
That’s right: Extend Medicare to everyone. By replacing our crazy-quilt, inefficient system of private health insurers with a streamlined, publicly financed single-payer program, we would reap enormous savings.
First, we would save about $400 billion annually that is presently wasted on u
nnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy. That’s enough money to cover everyone who is currently uninsured and to upgrade everyone else’s coverage without increasing overall U.S. health spending by a single penny.
Patients could go to the doctor and hospital of their choice. They’d be covered for all medically necessary services and medications, with no co-pays or deductibles.
Second, we’d acquire powerful cost-control tools like the ability to purchase medications in bulk, negotiate fees, develop global budgets for hospitals and coordinate capital investments. Such tools would rein in costs and help assure the program’s sustainability over the long haul.
Conventional wisdom suggests we should wait and see how the new health law plays out. But we’ve seen how comparable reforms have fared on the state level: They’ve invariably failed after only a few years, chiefly because they can’t control costs. Meanwhile more millions suffer.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. So when naysayers urge cuts to Medicare, don’t buy it. Tell them to ask Congress to enhance Medicare and to extend it to all.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-oped-0805-pro-20100804,0,2770491.story
By Susanne L. King
The Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle, Friday July 30, 2010
Say “Happy Birthday” to Medicare, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson 45 years ago, on July 30, 1965.
This national program provides health insurance coverage for everyone 65 years and older, regardless of income or health status, as well as covering people with disabilities. Our senior citizens love Medicare, which, along with Social Security, has substantially lowered poverty among the elderly, providing a secure safety net for our most vulnerable citizens.
Medicare is an example of a “single payer” health insurance program, in which health care dollars are administered by only one payer, the federal government. Medicare patients love the program for a number of reasons. Their premiums, deductibles and co-payments are reasonably priced. No one 65 and older can be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Patients have their choice of doctors and hospitals, and are able to make decisions with their doctors about the care they need.
This safety net is now being threatened. President Obama has appointed a committee, the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” to make recommendations to Congress for reducing our federal deficit. Unfortunately, some members of this commission are already considering cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits. Other solutions for reducing the deficit, like cutting the military budget, taxing the rich, negotiating drug costs, and eliminating the waste of the private health insurance industry by enacting a single-payer health insurance program, are not being considered. The commission is expected to make its recommendations to the House of Representatives after the fall elections, with a vote anticipated in December during a lame duck period of Congress.
Instead of cutting Medicare benefits, a better solution is to eliminate the failed and very costly for-profit “multiple payer” model, that includes hundreds of private health insurance companies with their high administrative costs and exorbitant CEO salaries, as well as their intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship. A much more cost-effective insurance approach would be to improve and expand Medicare to include everyone. At a time when our nation faces high unemployment, and fiscal crises, an expanded Medicare program would be a boon for individuals, small businesses, towns and states.
How would such a program produce savings and control health care costs? First, with Medicare, administrative costs are much lower than for private insurance companies. Administrative savings would be about $400 billion/year, enough money to provide coverage for everyone. Second, prescription drug prices would be negotiated, and drug costs could be lowered by 40 percent, bringing U.S prices in line with other developed countries. Third, an expanded Medicare system could establish global budgets for health care facilities.
The majority of Americans support Medicare and an expansion of this program to provide single-payer health insurance for everyone. Last week this was demonstrated again when participants in town meetings sponsored by “America Speaks” demanded single-payer as the option to solve the health care crisis, and 71 percent voted to not cut Medicare and Medicaid.
Our public and private dollars are flowing into the coffers of the private health insurance industry. These insurance companies continue to squeeze patients and health care providers financially, while paying their executives enormous salaries and bonuses. In 2009, the United Health Group, one of the biggest health insurance companies, paid CEO Stephen Helmsley a compensation package of over $107. 5 million. A recent conference of health economists in Chicago concluded that increasing consolidation in the health insurance industry has led to higher premiums, fewer jobs for health care workers, and reduced physician earnings.
Obama’s commission should not recommend cutting Medicare benefits. Write to your senators and representatives, and let them know how you feel about preserving, and expanding Medicare. Ask them to improve and strengthen Medicare by making it available to everyone, so that in coming years we will all be able to enjoy and celebrate the birthday of this life-saving health insurance program.
Susanne L. King, M. D., is a Lenox-based practitioner.