International Journal of Health Services
Volume 35, Number 1 / 2005
Myths and Memes about Single-Payer Health Insurance in the United States:
A Rebuttal to Conservative Claims
By John P. Geyman
Abstract:
Recent years have seen the rapid growth of private think tanks within the neoconservative movement that conduct “policy research” biased to their own agenda. This article provides an evidence-based rebuttal to a 2002 report by one such think tank, the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), which was intended to discredit 20 alleged myths about single-payer national health insurance as a policy option for the United States. Eleven “myths” are rebutted under eight categories: access,cost containment, quality, efficiency, single-payer as solution, control of drug prices, ability to compete abroad (the “business case”), and public support for a single-payer system. Six memes (self-replicating ideas that are promulgated without regard to their merits) are identified in the NCPA report. Myths and memes should have no place in the national debate now underway over the future of a failing health care system, and need to be recognized as such and countered by experience and unbiased evidence.
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Comment: John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis has recently released his book, “Lives at Risk.” It is an attack on singlepayer reform that is a rehash of their prior report on twenty alleged myths of single payer insurance (mentioned in the abstract above). Goodman’s book was given a glowing review in the current issue of JAMA, but that review was by Jane Orient, Executive Director of the extreme right-wing Association of American Physicians & Surgeons and a long-standing opponent of single payer reform.
PNHP’s president, John Geyman, has written a detailed rebuttal of Goodman’s claims which has been published in the current issue of the International Journal of Health Services. The abstract is reproduced above, but, unfortunately the full article is accessible only to subscribers or by payment of a fee. At any rate, it is important to know that PNHP has not allowed Goodman’s outrageous thesis to go unchallenged.