North County Times
3/10/02
By Bruce Kauffman
OCEANSIDE —- An advocate for reform of the nation’s health care system said Saturday that medical bills will become the number one cause of bankruptcy in America if administrative costs are not curbed and insurance coverage is not made more available.
Speaking at a conference presented by the North Coast chapter of the League of Women Voters, Don McCanne, a retired Orange County physician who is active in Physicians for Social Responsibility, criticized insurers and the health-care industry for spending up to roughly one of every four dollars in resources on administration.
“Just handling the money burns up a lot of funds,” McCanne said.
McCanne said bringing administrative overhead down to 10 percent would save a quarter of a trillion dollars, money that could pay the health care needs of a “rapidly expanding group” of people with inadequate or no insurance. That group may include some 85 million Americans, he said.
Said another speaker, Gregory Knoll, director of the consumer center for health education and advocacy of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego: “Here’s the deal —- access to quality health care ought to be a constitutional right. If we don’t look at how we’re going to change this system and delve into it and make it work for everybody, we’ve got a problem.”
Comment: At the conference the point was made that employers and insurers were shifting more costs and risks to employee-beneficiaries. For individuals with significant medical problems, the out-of-pocket expenses are beginning to exceed disposable income. An continuation of this trend may result in insolvency for enough individuals such that unpaid medical bills could move into first place as a cause of bankruptcy.
Also, the shifting of costs from administration to patient care was shown to be achievable based on the preliminary results of the California Health Care Options Study. Replacing the fragmented, inefficient system of private and public plans and no health plans at all, with a single, publicly administered insurance program, would save enough to pay for comprehensive health care benefits for everyone.