May 2, 2002
Academics, analysts, lawmakers and the public: from all sides there are complaints that the country’s health care system isn’t working. More than 40 million are uninsured. Costs are soaring and so are premiums, nowhere more than in California, where many will see their rates rise 25% in the next year.
James Kahn, M.D., an epidemiologist and health services researcher at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco:
“We spend ($15 billion in California) every year to administer the health care system, and what do we get for that? Are people pleased that they have to change health plans? Are they pleased that they have to change doctors, that they have to fight with insurance plans about what’s covered and what isn’t?”
… single payer advocates claim that they can give more people more services for less money, a claim substantiated by an independent review of California’s single payer proposals from the Lewin Group.
In order to overhaul the system there needs to be broad political backing and extensive public education and support, but California advocates of a single payer system point to the increasing premiums, dwindling benefits, and the growing number of uninsured. The time is right for change, they say, and California, with its history of political independence, stands the best chance of making it happen.
This audio report is available through a link at KFF’s Daily Health Policy Report at:
James Kahn’s co-authors of the UCSF single payer proposal for the California Health Care Options Project include Thomas Bodenheimer, Kevin Grumbach, Vishu Lingappa, Krista Farey and Don McCanne. All proposals and the analyses of them are now available at: