Letter to the Editor
New York Times
July 25, 2008
To the Editor:
Barack Obama proposes to make health care affordable for all Americans with an injection of cash from the repeal of the Bush tax cuts and with savings realized from electronic health information technology and programs to improve disease prevention and chronic disease management. While better record-keeping and prevention and management programs would improve the quality of our medical system, there is little data that they would actually save money. They certainly would not do so for many years.
Most waste in our health care system is a result of our reliance on private health insurers. Having multiple competing insurers results in costs for marketing, underwriting, billing, claims adjudication, executive salaries and profit.
Administrative costs account for 31 percent of all health care spending in the United States, but only 17 percent in Canada’s single payer system. The administrative costs of America’s own single-payer system, Medicare, are only about 3 percent, compared with 12 to 15 percent for private insurers.
If Mr. Obama wants to save enough to provide health care for every American, he needs to open the debate to include consideration of Medicare for all in the United States.
Rachel Nardin
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is chairwoman of the Massachusetts chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.