By Marjorie B. Colson
June 11, 2003
I am an 80-year-old American enrolled in a 40-million-member single-payer health plan called Medicare. I have been enrolled in Medicare for 15 years, and while I am not 100 percent satisfied with the program, I wouldn’t trade it for any private health insurance plan anywhere in the world. I have good company, and lots of it. Roughly 40 million people agree with me.
Here’s why:
I know, when I go to the doctor or to the hospital, my bills will be paid. Twice over the past two years, I have been in the hospital as the result of a fall. Once I broke my hip and needed a stay in the hospital, hip surgery and follow-up rehabilitation; and once I fractured an ankle and sprained my feet and one knee, requiring, again, hospitalization and follow-up rehabilitation at a nursing home. For those services, plus many additional weeks of outpatient therapy, I paid nothing.
I feel fairly secure about my health insurance plan, as it is shared by about 40 million people, most of whom are prepared, at the drop of a hat, to take action to foil government officials proposing changes in our plan that might affect us adversely.
I am very familiar with the power of Medicare recipients, being the president of a large senior organization in central Wisconsin, and being responsible on occasion to organize a response to a government action that we feel threatens our health and our quality of life. Something called “Third Rail Politics” has been developed around both the Medicare and Social Security programs as a result of our activism on behalf of ourselves and others like us.
Because my health plan is public, a government plan, I have three elected officials who might be said to sit on the board of my health plan. My representatives are accountable to me and my fellow seniors, and respond to our complaints and problems.
If I were in a private health plan, the board would be made up of individuals appointed by shareholders. Such board members are never accountable to patients of their health insurance or health maintenance companies. Patients, in fact, don’t know who board members are and have no right to try to speak to them about the quality of their care.
I suggest that fellow citizens enrolled in smaller splinter groups called private insurance plans might want to look at the ability of senior and disabled people to defend our programs and ourselves, and consider trying to get into our single-payer plan or a similar government health plan. I can guarantee, after 15 years in Medicare, that it will take a huge worry from your mind.
I have absolute freedom to choose my doctor or other health care provider. I have a government-issued card that guarantees me entrance to the clinic or hospital of my choice. And my membership in the huge Medicare club assures me help and support when I need it.
Like many senior and disabled people on Medicare, I do not currently have a prescription drug benefit. That situation, interestingly, is being remedied (at least partially and temporarily) by the small free market that happens to still exist in the nation. Storefronts and Internet sites selling drugs at Canadian prices are proliferating so rapidly that retail pharmacists are trying to organize to force seniors and disabled people to return to their own more pricey U.S. pharmacy counters. It won’t happen, as more and more Medicare recipients find their own cut-rate pharmacies with Canadian prices. We are creating our own remedy, e-mailing each other as we find new and better drug prices in Canada – a country with a single-payer health care system that serves all of its citizens.
When people talk about how hard it is to repair the broken health care system in the United States, I respond by reminding them that a rational and realistic solution exists:
Single-payer anyone? Join the club.
Marjorie B. Colson lives in Madison and is active with many local groups, including the Dane County SOS Senior Council.
Published: 10:09 AM 6/11/03
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/guest/50645.php