By Samuel Metz, M.D.
The Oregonian, July 26, 2011
Medicare turns 46 this week and there is much to celebrate. Medicare assures health care for seniors who might otherwise find health care inaccessible. It saves our government money. It makes the lives of our seniors better.
Two concepts inspired Medicare. First, seniors require more care than younger Americans. Second, seniors usually live on less income; many survive only on Social Security. This combination renders seniors extremely vulnerable to losing their savings, homes or lives from easily treatable diseases.
And Medicare provides good care. American life expectancy at birth ranks 30th in the world. We remain 30th for the rest of our lives — until we reach 65. Then, our rank rises until we reach 14th at 80. We can thank the remarkable access to health care provided by Medicare.
Every industrialized nation guarantees health care for seniors. Indeed, we are unhappily distinctive in being the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee care for everyone else, as well. Medicare restores us to a civilized status.
Before Medicare, only 40 percent of nonworking seniors had health insurance, and of those with coverage, private insurance paid for less than 10 percent of their hospital bills. The principle of insuring only the healthy who consume little care and avoiding the sick has always driven our private insurance industry. No insurance company can make money by offering the same comprehensive, affordable coverage to seniors as Medicare, so they don’t offer it. Our experience with Medicare Advantage, an effort to privatize parts of Medicare, resulted in our government spending $17 billion more for the same benefits available through Medicare. Our private insurance industry was in no hurry to insure seniors before Medicare started. They are in no hurry now. Medicare revolutionized health care access for seniors.
Why is Medicare expensive? Simply, health care for seniors will always cost more than that of healthier, younger Americans. And costs are rising in every health care system around the world, not just Medicare. The United States is doubly cursed because our costs are rising faster and are already twice as expensive as other countries. Though hard to believe, Medicare is a leader in fighting cost increases. Private insurance industry costs are rising nearly twice as fast as those of Medicare. And when it comes to administrative expenses, private insurance is 10 times higher than Medicare. In fact, if the single payer financing of Medicare were applied to citizens of all ages, we would save $350 billion annually, more than enough to provide comprehensive health care to every American.
Medicare is good for our seniors and good for our country. It provides health care far more affordably and efficiently than our private insurance industry. It saves our country hundreds of billions of dollars in administrative overhead. And if we expand Medicare to cover younger, healthier Americans, we would all get more care at less cost.
Medicare: Celebrate it, protect it, improve it, and expand it. We need more Medicare, not less.
Portland physician Samuel Metz is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and a founding member of Mad As Hell Doctors.
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/07/medicare_at_46.html
