Albany Times Union
Letter to the Editor
Friday, March 27, 2009
A close reading of Harry Rosenfeld’s thoughtful March 1 column, “Health care still Gordian knot,” reveals an intriguing framing of the single-payer option.
Despite “opponent criticism” that single payer denies physician and hospital choice, the factual record for traditional single-payer Medicare is that it does indeed preserve choice of physicians and hospitals.
Privatized Medicare Advantage plans, however, as in Medicare part D, and HMO plans, do ration doctor, hospital and pharmaceutical choice to maximize profits.
A taxpayers’ subsidy adds to profits. The 45 million uninsured have complete rationing.
Single-payer guaranteed health care for all, as in HR676, with an overhead of 4 percent, deserves equal consideration in all hearings and negotiations. Let there be honest comparisons with subsidized incremental private health insurance proposals, with their overheads of 15 to 25 percent and uncontrolled premium increases, totaling 100 percent in the last decade.
There is plenty of money in the system to cover all if it was spent on health care and not administration.
We were told by the Obama campaign that “while the insurance companies would be at the (negotiating) table, they would not own the table.” Millions of American voters are actively calling for that to be true.
Richard Propp, M.D.
Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare
Albany