David Donohueās editorial for the Wilmington Delaware News Journal printed on October 7th.
The news that the number of uninsured Americans has risen to 43.6 million, including more than 8 million children, underscores how broken our health care system is. Studies show that people lacking health insurance have a 25 percent higher death rate and a higher infant mortality rate.
Most of the uninsured work hard at low-paying jobs. The world’s wealthiest nation stands alone in its immoral disregard for the uninsured. Furthermore, the United States spend roughly double what any other industrialized country spends on health care.
Many people say that if we went to a Canadian-style national health insurance program, we would degrade our quality of care, including have longer waiting times. Surveys show Canadians are equally or better satisfied with their health care system than Americans are with theirs. Canadian health ministers would be the first to tell you that if you were to double their budget to U.S. levels, then sure, they would reduce waits for MRIs.
The cure for our health woes requires cost containment and reduction of waste. The only way to accomplish this is to enact a national health insurance program. This is not nationalized health care: Doctors would remain private entities and patients would be free to see whoever they choose. The difference would be doctors and hospitals would have to deal with one payor rather than dozens. That payor would be modeled after Medicare. A complete plan was proposed in last month’s Journal of the American Medical Association by Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).
President Bush’s proposed $89 billion in health care tax credits is not a solution. Taxes are not what is preventing the working poor from getting insurance in the first place.