From Staff Reports
Cumberland Times-News
Saturday, March 28, 2009
CUMBERLAND, MD — A single-payer health reform bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week could cover 46 million Americans who lack coverage and improve benefits for others by eliminating co-pays and deductibles.
“The proposal in the Senate and its counterparts in the House are sure to be branded as socialized medicine,” said Dr. Wayne Spiggle, local doctor and member of the Physicians for a National Health Program. “They are nothing of the kind. Medicare is a single-payer program and it is not socialized medicine. Doctors are clearly less hassled by Medicare than by private insurance companies, and patients are better served.”
The proposed bill was introduced Wednesday by Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The American Health Security Act of 2009 would cut private insurance overhead and bureaucracy in medical settings, with an estimated savings of more than $400 billion that could be directed to clinical care.
“This is excellent news for the nation’s health,” said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of PNHP. “There is now an affordable cure for our dysfunctional health care system. In the face of our present economic calamity, this is an urgent necessity.”
The proposed program would be paid for by combining current sources of government health spending into a single fund with modest taxes that amount to less than what people pay for insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
It would be administered by the states, with hopes that would reduce the paperwork that people in the health care industry deal with.
Patients would be able to go to their own doctors and community health centers would be fully funded.
The program would provide resources to the National Health Service Corps to train an additional 24,000 health professionals to deal with the shortage of primary care physicians and dentists.
“We are confident that Sen. Sanders’ bill will accelerate the national drive for the only reform that we know will work,” Young said. “A majority of physicians endorse such an approach. … We remember well that President Obama once acknowledged that single-payer national health insurance was the best way to go. It still is.”
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