Dr. Peter Mott
Guest essayist
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
(April 12, 2006) — If we as a nation or state try to fill in health care gaps one at a time — first to cover those with no health insurance (more than 45 million Americans), then those with partial coverage (another 50 million), we would add new costs to the ongoing ones — a huge overall increase.
Thorough studies have been made of the costs of various national or statewide health insurance options. Economists found, and the General Accounting Office confirmed, that only one would save money. A Canadian-style, single-payer plan could save $200 billion per year, while covering all citizens for all necessary health services. As in Canada, this would include preserving private hospitals and patient choice of doctors.
How does a single-payer system cut costs so dramatically? Such a system means no competing insurance corporations, no advertising, practically no billing or collecting, no stockholder profits. Usually it also means more regional health planning to avoid wasteful duplication of equipment but adding needed services. This cooperative approach is similar to the way hospitals worked together in the Rochester region during the 1960s and 1970s, making the area a model at that time.
Why isn’t the public calling for a single-payer system? Several years ago I attended a health conference in Toronto at which a full-page advertisement in the Toronto Globe and Mail was shown to participants. It listed many complaints about Canadian “Medicare” but, in small print at the bottom, it said the ad was paid for by the U.S. health insurance industry. That was typical of the propaganda we hear about Canadian health care: long waits, doctors leaving Canada. However, according to polls, the vast majority of Canadian doctors like their system, and they have had 42 years of experience since the provincial plans merged in 1964. Waiting time in Ontario did increase when the Conservative premier cut hospital budgets, fired nurses and closed hospitals to reduce costs. It is ironic that he made that effort in a province where total health costs per capita are almost half those in the United States. Moreover, total costs are rising in Canada more slowly than in America.
Here in Rochester the Interfaith Health Care Coalition has joined the New York State Health Care Campaign to push the state Senate to fund a study of our options. If such a study shows again that all options will add enormously to total costs except for the single-payer health care plan — and that kind of statewide health insurance would save billions of dollars — then only politics could prevent a simple decision. And the people should then demand to know what are those political influences, and who pays for them.
Mott, of Pittsford, is a member, Interfaith Health Care Coalition.