By Jay D. Brock, M.D.
The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.), March 7, 2020
There’s a reason why Canadians love their Single Payer Health Insurance System more than hockey, while our health insurance industry is about as popular as the telemarketing industry.
We all see the costs increase beyond our control, and wonder where and how it will end. We all hear or worry about the denials of care. Or seethe when our health insurance company takes away our choice of physician.
What’s going on?
Blame the health insurance industry upon which our health insurance system is based. Its business model is to take in as many of our healthcare dollars as possible, but spend as few of them on our healthcare as it can get away with—the classic definition of a wasteful middleman. This is a system built with the health of the insurance industry— not our health—in mind.
No wonder Single Payer Medicare for All, gaining in popularity, has health insurance CEO’s so worried.
Especially since “Waste” should be our system’s middle name. Our healthcare costs become increasingly unaffordable because the system manages to spend hundreds of billions of our healthcare dollars on administrative and other costs that have nothing to do with our health and everything to do with building a bigger medical bureaucracy.
The waste is staggering indeed—a top medical journal, “The Lancet”, just published a major article revealing that a Single Payer Medicare for All would not only cover everyone and do it without any additional out of pocket costs for us, it would also save $450 billion and 68,000 lives a year—lives now lost because too many of us cannot afford timely medical care.
Critics who complain that the Canadian system, like any system, has its problems, ignore that it spends much less than we do. Sadly, these critics neglect to mention that when we switch to a Single Payer, money now wasted on those administrative costs would go to our healthcare, and there would then be enough money to cover everyone’s care—and do it without any additional out of pocket costs— while covering some aspects of care Canadians can only dream about, including medications and even nursing home care.
Please note that Single Payer Medicare for All doesn’t change our healthcare delivery system—rightly the envy of the world—it changes how we fund and pay for it. So increased wait times for getting appointments, especially elective procedures, largely a function of how much money is in the system, and not the system itself, should not be a problem. (If some of the hundreds of billions saved with M4A is spent on educating more doctors and nurses, wait times for all should even improve compared to now.)
Despite what critics claim, the average American will see their take-home pay go up—and their healthcare costs go down. Economists have told us that the vast majority of Americans, perhaps as many as 95% of us, would come out ahead.
Can the country afford M4A?
Absolutely.
We already put enough money into healthcare to pay for it, but with all the waste we just don’t spend it wisely.
What we can cannot afford is the current system, with its waste of money—and lives—that should be an affront to the family values of every American.
As every other modern nation spends half of what we spend while providing robust insurance to their entire country it offends my sense of pride in the United States to hear someone throw up their hands, abandon the American Dream, and claim that we are not able to do at least as well as they can. And our proof point is Medicare. For more than 50 years, Medicare has rescued American seniors from poverty, extended their lives, and provided them with access to nearly every physician and hospital.
Medicare for All seeks to improve Medicare, make it truly affordable, and extend it to all.
In the end, the decision will be about what’s more important—maintaining our family’s health with a truly fair and affordable Single Payer Medicare for All, or maintaining the current system.
I choose my family.
I hope you do too.
Dr. Jay D. Brock, a family medicine physician, lives in Fredericksburg.