The following is the speech that Dr. Ronald Lind intended to deliver at the March 23 White House-sponsored health forum in Des Moines, Iowa. Although he was not called upon (only one PNHP leader was able to speak from the floor), the force of his message is undiminished.
Don’t let special interests block single payer
By Ronald Lind, M.D.
My name is Ronald Lind. I’m an anesthesiologist and I’m currently working as an assistant professor at the University of Iowa. Prior to this academic appointment I spent 18 years working in community-based practice.
I’m here today representing Physicians For a National Health Program (PNHP), an organization of over 15,000 physicians nationwide committed to reforming health care through the implementation of single-payer national health insurance program — essentially an expansion of the Medicare program to cover everyone in the country.
We support the passage of legislation introduced in every legislative session by Rep. John Conyers Jr., H.R. 676, titled the U.S. National Health Care Act. Of all the proposed methods of effecting health care reform being considered in Congress, this legislation enjoys the most support with over 90 co-sponsors in the most recently concluded legislative session.
Multiple polls and studies also indicate the support of a solid majority of the American population and also physicians for this approach to health care reform. Single payer offers many advantages, including but not limited to universal coverage, portability and cost control.
And yet there are powerful and well-financed special interests that profit mightily from the status quo who are fighting vigorously to ensure that this proposal isn’t even under consideration at these health care forums or anywhere else that health care reform is officially discussed, like Congress.
They are concerned that their enormous profiteering will be curtailed with the passage of this legislation, and in fact it will. So these special interests spend millions of dollars annually in lobbying to ensure maintaining or only minimally tinkering with our current system of employment-based, for-profit health insurance. They want to make sure that they are the only ones at the table so that they don’t end up on the menu.
Well, we don’t have millions of dollars for lobbying or to attempt to buy influence. The only group that benefits from single-payer national health insurance is the American people, who don’t have a lobby. So we’re not paid lobbyists. We’re volunteers and we’re here today and at all the White House-sponsored regional health care forums to show our support for single-payer health care reform and to demand that this proposal is given at least the same consideration as other options by our government.
By any measure of health, every other Western nation in the world does a better job than we do, and at reduced cost. The one thing they all have in common is non-dependence on a for-profit health insurance model. Only single-payer national health insurance can solve our current predicament. Only single payer can provide universal coverage affordably. Only single payer can control the ever escalating costs of medical care that are slowly but steadily bankrupting the country. Please join us in supporting H.R. 676.
Lastly, every caring American physician can tell a tragic story about a patient without health insurance. Here’s mine. I was called upon to anesthetize a 58-year-old woman who traveled 150 miles to the university for a mastectomy, passing at least six hospitals on the way, several right here in Des Moines.
When I asked her why she traveled so far for a relatively routine procedure she told me it was due to a lack of health insurance. Did I mention that she’s a nurse? A year earlier her employer dropped health insurance coverage in a cost-cutting move. Since she couldn’t afford to buy health insurance on her salary, she rolled the dice, hoping she’d remain healthy until she qualified for Medicare.
Well, she lost her bet and developed breast cancer. What is tragic about this case is that she was a candidate for a more conservative treatment plan of limited surgery followed by a month of radiation treatments. But since no local hospital would treat her due to her insurance status, this would have required either a daily 300-mile commute or a month’s stay in Iowa City for the radiation treatments.
She didn’t feel she could miss that much work so she elected to have the more radical, more disfiguring surgery, thus allowing her to return to work in about a week. Because she was having the more radical procedure we offered her a nerve block for post-operative pain management. In addition to providing superior pain management there is some preliminary evidence that nerve blocks also reduce the chances of cancer recurrence in this setting.
After explaining these facts to her she told me, “That sounds great, but it also sounds expensive. And since I intend to pay these medical bills, I would appreciate it if you would do the anesthetic as cheaply as possible.”
Folks, this substandard care didn’t need to happen. And it won’t happen again if H.R. 676, single payer, is enacted. Please join us in supporting H.R. 676. Thank you.