Private health plans are responsible for much of the administrative waste that uniquely characterizes the health care system of the United States. And for this outrageous cost and inefficiency, these plans are providing highly flawed and inequitable methods of pooling funds and allocating health care resources. We are receiving remarkably...

Single payer national health insurance would resolve virtually all of the major problems facing America's health care system today. Single payer insurance is commonly defined as a single government fund within each state which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers, replacing the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and health plans. It would provide coverage for the 44 million who are uninsured...

We really do need to step back and briefly absorb a panoramic perspective of the status of health care in America. At 14% of the Gross Domestic Product of the wealthiest nation on earth, the amount that we already delegate to health care, we have available an enormous reserve of funds, the envy of the world...

MANY MISCONSTRUE US health system reform options by presuming that "trade-offs" are needed to counter-balance the competing goals of increasing access, containing costs, and preserving quality.^{1, 2} Standing as an apparent paradox to this zero-sum equation are countries such as Canada that ensure access to all at a cost 40% per capita less, with satisfaction and outcomes as good as or better than those in the United States.^{3, 4} While the efficiencies of a single-payer universal program are widely acknowledged to facilitate simultaneous cost control and universal access, lingering concerns about quality have blunted support for this approach...

The financing and delivery of long-term care (LTC) need substantial reform. Many cannot afford essential services; age restrictions often arbitrarily limit access for the nonelderly, although more than a third of those needing care are under 65 years old; Medicaid, the principal third-party payer for LTC, is biased toward nursing home care and discourages independent living...

The Physicians for a National Health Program proposes to cover all Americans under a single, comprehensive public insurance program without copayments or deductibles and with free choice of provider. Such a national health program could reap tens of billions of dollars in administrative savings in the initial years, enough to fund generous increases in health care services not only for the uninsured, but for the underinsured as well...

In 1983 the proportion of health care expenditures consumed by administration in the United States was 60 percent higher than in Canada and 97 percent higher than in Britain. To asses the effects of recent health policy initiatives on the administrative efficiency of health care, we examined four components of administrative costs in the United States and Canada for 1987: insurance overhead, hospital administration, nursing home administration, and physicians’ billing and overhead expenses...

Our health care system is failing. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, costs are skyrocketing, and the bureaucracy is expanding. Patchwork reforms succeed only in exchanging old problems for new ones. It is time for basic change in American medicine. We propose a national health program that would (1) fully cover everyone under a single, comprehensive public insurance program; (2) pay hospitals and nursing homes a total (global) annual amount to cover all operating expenses; (3) fund capital costs through separate appropriations; (4) pay for physicians’ services and ambulatory services in any of three ways...