By Elizabeth Kurczynski and Allen Chauvenet
West Virginia Gazette
February 10, 2008
As physicians who treat children with blood diseases and cancer at Women and Children’s Hospital, we frequently see families with either inadequate insurance coverage or no coverage at all. These are almost always working families with one or both parents who have a steady job.
These families are part of the 47 million Americans and the 322,000 in West Virginia with no health insurance coverage. Even families with “good” coverage are paying more per year with much higher co-payments and deductibles, since the cost of health insurance for a family is now over $12,000 per year.
Most Americans realize that our health-care system is in crisis. All of the presidential candidates propose incremental changes that would offer more people the opportunity to “buy” coverage, or offer families small grants to help them buy a cheaper insurance plan that provides only adequate coverage for those who are healthy. How many can afford $12,000 a year?
Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate who favors a nationwide single-payer health plan, which would provide coverage for everyone for all health-care needs, including drugs. Everyone who votes should know that this plan exists. It is an affordable alternative to more insurance. It could cover everyone for no more money than the $7,500 per person per year that we are currently spending for health care in the United States.
In the past, Barack Obama has said that a single-payer plan is the best health plan, but he now says that it is not politically feasible. In other words, our elected representatives feel that the insurance and drug lobbying interests are too powerful to fight. But these are the people we elect to support our interests nationally!
Thousands of physicians and many organizations such as the American College of Physicians and The Charleston Gazette have endorsed a single-payer universal health plan. Physicians for a National Health Plan is a national group that has been working for a single-payer plan for the past 20 years (PNHP.org). We have a Mountaineer Chapter of PNHP here in Charleston. Every other Western country covers everybody. We can do it, too.
Such a system would be similar to the Canadian health system, but better funded, since the Canadians pay less than $4,000 per person for health care. A single-payer system would be supported by tax dollars – about 6 percent for businesses, and about 2 percent for individuals, less than we currently pay. But the system would be privately run, and patients could choose their own physicians and hospitals. Everything would be covered, including doctors, hospital stays, long-term care, mental health, dental and vision care and prescription drugs. Hospitals would be given a lump sum for the year, and would not have to negotiate with and bill dozens of separate insurance companies. Physicians would be paid a set amount for specific services, and would no longer have to employ billing clerks to fill out many different complex insurance forms to receive reimbursement at a reduced rate.
Administrative costs in our current health-care system are between 30 and 40 percent of our total health-care costs, whereas a single-payer plan such as Canada’s system, Medicaid, Medicare or the Veterans Administration health-care system, has only about 3 percent administrative costs. This dramatic savings would be enough to provide complete coverage for everyone in the United States.
Many polls have clearly shown that at least 65 percent of Americans want national health insurance, and over 97 percent of Canadians like their health-care system and would not want a U.S.-style system. How have we let our system get to the point where it is run by for-profit insurance companies whose goal is to deny care and to make more money for their Wall Street stockholders? Our Mountaineer chapter of Physicians for a National Health Plan would like all West Virginians to learn about a better alternative that can provide universal care, and eliminate the inequality and injustice in our current system.
Kurczynski and Chauvenet are both pediatricians and professors with WVU in Charleston.
