By Ed Weisbart, M.D.
The Lawton (Okla.) Constitution, Feb. 2, 2014
I am a proudly patriotic, fiscally prudent, family physician. For those three reasons, I support a national health insurance program.
Patriots like me prefer to think that America leads the world. Unfortunately, statistics show that we lag far behind in health care. Our diabetics are more likely to get an amputation, our maternal and infant mortality rates are among the worst, and our life expectancy ranks 51st in the world.
We have many of the world’s best doctors and hospitals. So how do we explain our poor health outcomes?
It’s our deeply flawed way of paying for care.
We should demand an explanation for why we continue to spend double any other nation per person on health care, despite our dreadful results.
Nearly two-thirds of that spending comes from our tax dollars. Our public funds for health care are already higher than the total health spending in any other nation. We’re paying more than enough for universal comprehensive health care, but we’re not getting it.
Even more striking, 31 percent of what we spend on health care has nothing to do with actual care. That 31 percent goes to the paperwork and administration inherent in an insurance model designed to be confusing to patients and profitable for big insurance companies.
In contrast, all other nations spend less than 10 percent on overhead. Our own Medicare program has overhead of roughly 2-5 percent.
Thirty-one percent. That means that of my $1,300 monthly premium, $403 dollars is squandered every month just to prop up the bureaucracy inflicted on us by the health insurance industry.
As a practicing physician, I see the ravages of living with inadequate insurance. I’ve seen my diabetics take their insulin every other day, my hypertensives choosing between prescription and eviction, and my 64-year-old stroke patients choosing to wait until they turn 65, get Medicare, and can afford what they need to stay alive.
This is not the United States I was brought up to believe in.
Yes, we have emergency rooms as a last resort. But patients often defer or forgo care, sometimes with fatal consequences. Further, by limiting universal access to the ER means that we pay the $48,000 average cost of a stroke, but we refuse to pay for a $4 bottle of pills to prevent that stroke. This is both terrible health care and fiscal imprudence. It is inconsistent with our nation’s alleged culture of life.
The good news is that there is a solution, hiding in plain sight. Most seniors love their Medicare program, despite its limitations. Many seniors purchase a wrap or supplement to fill Medicare’s gaps. We could simply embed those supplements into the Medicare program and provide that to all Americans, not just seniors.
Every serious economic analysis shows that the savings from an “improved Medicare for all,” otherwise known as single-payer national health insurance, would more than outstrip its new expenses.
By slashing the administrative waste and redirecting that money to care, and by eliminating premiums, copays and deductibles, 95 percent of Americans would spend less, not more, on health care.
For businesses, these savings would spill over into reductions in workers comp, liability, and even auto insurance. Such a system would also provide more predictable future costs.
Only through a single-payer model can we establish a business case for improving the health of all Americans. With everyone (including Congress) in the same program, we would reap the benefits of timely, effective care, treating hypertension and diabetes rather than continually courting preventable medical disasters.
What are we waiting for?
Ed Weisbart, M.D., is chair of the Missouri chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
