(unpublished)
Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
Re: “Universal Health Care Gets Boost,” May 26
The common perception of the health care reform proposals of the Democratic candidates is that, as stated in the Washington Post (Universal Health Care Gets Boost,” May 26), all proposals are “big and ambitious, and are far costlier than anything that has been proposed since Clinton.” But that’s not quite true. The most ambitious proposal, the single payer proposal of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would provide comprehensive coverage for everyone without increasing health care costs.
California Health and Human Services Agency supervised a study of nine models of health care reform. An independeant analysis demonstrated that all models that build on our current system of private health plans and public programs actually do increase costs. But the models that replace the existing private plans and public programs with a single public payer were shown to be capable of providing comprehensive benefits for everyone while actually reducing total health care costs, primarily by eliminating the profound administrative waste that characterizes our current fragmented system of funding care.
The findings are not a mere theoretical construct. The current issue of Health Affairs includes a report on the single payer system established in Taiwan in 1995. Their program “brought the health care utilization rates of the 41 percent of Taiwan’s hitherto uninsured population up to a par with those of the previously insured population” without increasing costs nor increasing waiting times for health care services.
Single payer reform is often dismissed as not being “politically feasible.” But that is hardly a reason to not take a closer look at it. A single payer system would benefit everyone by covering all essential medical services. It would benefit health care providers by converting administrative waste into resources to pay for more care. It would benefit businesses by providing proven mechanisms to contain health care costs, which is not possible under our current system. It would benefit taxpayers by providing better mechanisms to contain government health care costs. The only losers would be the private health plans. But why should our national policies be designed to protect and nurture this expensive, superfluous, and egregiously wasteful industry, at the cost of so much suffering and even death of those who are left out of our system?
It’s time to set aside politics and closely examine policies that would accomplish our goals of affordable, comprehensive coverage for everyone. The single payer model of reform is the only model that would ensure affordability of a truly universal and comprehensive program. It certainly should be front and center in all debates on reform.
Don McCanne, MD
President, Physicians for a National Health Program
Chicago, IL
www.pnhp.org