Scrap private approaches to health care
USA Today
November 16, 2001
USA TODAY commentary writers Ted Halstead and Michael Lind make the claim that the war on terrorism calls for shifting the responsibility for health insurance to the individual and that a single universal plan should be avoided (''Lack of health care for all creates U.S. security risk,'' The Forum, Monday).
Their organization, the New America Foundation, supports the crafting of new public-policy solutions for our social ills. Shifting health-insurance purchasing from the employer to the employee might be new, but relying on the fragmented, inefficient and ineffective health-plan marketplace is a stale solution that should be discarded.
Private market approaches have failed to control costs and have fallen short of improving coverage. Even worse, current trends are to shift more of the costs on to patients, exposing them to even greater financial risk.
We already have excess capacity in our health-care system. But access to health care is impaired due to financial barriers and will only grow worse.
If we were to eliminate the egregious waste of the private plans, the financial resources currently directed to health care would be enough to pay for comprehensive care for everyone.
Publicly funded universal health insurance would solve the problems that have been compounded by perverse incentives in the market. Everyone would have health-care coverage, and costs would be contained by a public system that would require value for our health care investment.
Don R. McCanne, M.D. President-elect, Physicians for a National Health Program