By Russell Noblett, M.D.
The Roanoke (Va.) Times, Letters, January 7, 2018
In our insurance-based health care system, the patient is not the customer, the shareholder is. The product being sold is proficiency at declining payment to their captive benefactors (all of us), who have no other access to care. Forty-three percent of Americans have difficulty paying their deductible according to the Kaiser Foundation. This precious money goes to the shareholder.
The cost of health care in the U.S. is over twice the average of 35 other advanced countries, yet we rank 81st among 195 countries on mortality. The overhead cost of American practices averages 55 percent of their revenue, while Canada’s averages 28 percent. According to the Kaiser Foundation, Medicare administrative costs are 2 percent, that is one-sixth the rate of private insurance. Traditional Medicare has an overhead of 3 percent, while private-managed is 30 percent. That precious money comes from you, and goes straight to the shareholder.
According to the Economist ‘YouGov’ poll in April, 2017: Sixty percent of Americans favor expanding Medicare to everyone: breaking down to 75 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents, and 46 percent of Republicans. Our current system is unfair, devastates spending capacity and mobility, and threatens well-being. This is not the meaning of health care.
The conservative Nobel-laureate economist, Angus Deaton, recently said, referring to our private insurance system, that we must “get this monster that we’ve created out of the economy and allow the rest of capitalism to flourish.” (Marketwatch, 3/6/2017)
U.S. House Bill HR 676 would expand Medicare to all citizens. It has 115 co-sponsors, with a majority of House Democrats signing on. It eliminates the insurance middleman, and would return $500 billion to the U.S. economy. It would be funded by payroll taxes, with elimination of premiums and out-of-pocket expenses (eliminating medical bankruptcy).
We need sane leadership returned to government.