In December, when America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released their new report indicating that they were fully committed to reform that would cover everyone, I responded in a Quote of the Day (12/4/08) with the following: “You could not possibly describe a proposal that would better serve the interests of the private insurance industry. They would create a standard of underinsurance, require all of us to purchase their products, and pretend to address affordability issues through tax credits.”

For those who were expecting a Quote of the Day on today’s White House Health Care Reform Summit, here is the the full discussion of single payer:

Should we care what Johns Hopkins Professor Bradley Herring has to say about single payer? Emphatically, yes. Prof. Herring is theoretically an academic purist, and has no relationship with the single payer community. Many of his policy studies on private health insurance have been done with Mark Pauly, of “moral hazard” fame. That would certainly place him outside of the single payer camp.

This article points out that a final decision has not been made, but it is nevertheless shocking that a non-profit university hospital has had under consideration a proposal to reduce the number of beds in an emergency room that already has a strained capacity.

In this closing exchange, Sen. Max Baucus seems to be annoyed with Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office. What is the background here?

Primarily because of political perceptions, Len Nichols continues to support what he believes to be the pragmatic approach of covering everyone with regulated private plans. However, when experts like David Himmelstein continue to confront him with the facts about our flawed financing system, Nichols’ support for private insurance seems to be shifting from knowing that it would work, to wishing that it could, even though “our system is a mess.” He needs to take the next step of acknowledging that private insurance can’t work so that we can move forward and fix the “mess” by enacting a single payer national health program.

Joseph Stiglitz’s response must be shared with the nation, and especially with those in Washington who say that single payer is not feasible. We should inundate Washington with his statement that single payer is “the only alternative.”

These are the most reliable numbers to use that represent our health care spending for this year. Rounding off these numbers makes them easier to remember and eases communication of the amounts.

In six previous reports, published from 2001 to 2004, the Institute of Medicine concluded that “being uninsured was hazardous to people’s health and recommended that the nation move quickly to implement a strategy to achieve health insurance coverage for all.”

OECD reports are important not only because of their credible studies of economic conditions throughout the world, but also because they are used for policy decisions in the thirty member nations (including the U.S.) plus more than one hundred other countries and economies. Thus it is important to understand this new OECD report, “Health Care Reform in the United States,” especially at this time when intensive reform efforts are taking place in Washington.