By BENNETT HALL Gazette-Times reporter
After more than 30 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Don McCanne has devoted himself to prescribing a cure for the nation’s ailing health care system: national health insurance.
“I really have one big message, and that is private health plans are an obsolete model of financing health care,” said McCanne, a retired California family practitioner and former president of Physicians for a National Health Program.
He’ll bring that message to Corvallis this week. At 7 p.m. Thursday, McCanne will deliver a free talk titled “Will Health Care Ever Be Affordable Again?” at Oregon State University’s Milam Auditorium, Northwest 26th Street at Campus Way.
McCanne believes the answer to the affordability question is national health insurance. By bringing all Americans under a single government-controlled plan, he argues, administrative costs can be consolidated, trimming much of the waste from the system.
Another cost driver in the private-payer approach is that it pays for procedures, rather than prevention, although early intervention is cheaper and often more effective. Another problem, McCanne said, is that Americans are far too enamored of costly high-tech diagnostic equipment such as MRIs, even when they can provide only limited help.
“Where it’s of benefit, it’s great,” he said. “But there’s a lot of data that show we overuse health care services for those individuals where there’s no benefit.”
McCanne sees little hope for improvement in the reform plans being offered by any of the leading presidential contenders, all of which he says boil down to variations on the current market-based approach of private coverage.
“Market costs are too high. You can’t just tell the public to start shopping better,” he said. “The private insurance industry can no longer provide us with products that are reasonably comprehensive … and have a premium that’s affordable to average-income households.”
Ultimately, McCanne thinks that things will have to get worse — both economically and medically — before Americans demand real health care reform from their government.
“It’s going to take a grass-roots effort.”
McCanne plans to speak to health care professionals at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center on Friday before traveling to Portland, where he’ll give another talk to medical providers next Monday.
“Action to bring change depends on education, and a lot of the public and physicians as well are simply unaware of the deep crisis we’re in,” said Dr. Mike Huntington of Corvallis, a former radiation oncologist who helped launch the Oregon chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, which is sponsoring McCanne’s talk.
“This is a chance to educate providers and the public on what can be done and to give our legislators courage — because they’ll need it.” McCanne’s appearance is co-sponsored by the OSU Public Health Club, Mid-Valley Health Care Advocates and the local chapter of the Archimedes Movement.
screen the Video
The Darkside Cinema, 215 S.W. Fourth St., will hold a benefit screening of “Health, Money and Fear” at 7 p.m. today and Tuesday. The video, a critique of the U.S. health care system, was produced by Corvallis emergency room physician Paul Hochfeld. Tickets are $5, with half the proceeds going to the Oregon chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.