Prescribing an epiphany for Ron Pollack and Henry Aaron

Costs derail Vermont’s dream of a single-payer health plan

By Jay Fitzgerald
The Boston Globe, January 25, 2015

For decades, liberal activists yearned for a European-style, single-payer health system that they argued would lead to more affordable, efficient, and comprehensive medical coverage for all citizens. When Vermont four years ago enacted a landmark bill to establish the nation’s first single-payer health care system, they saw their long-sought dream about to be fulfilled.

But reality hit last month.

(Henry Aaron)

“The idea of single-payer, or a Medicare-for-all type program, has always been a cherished dream for many in the Democratic Party,” said Henry J. Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning Washington think tank. “In truth, there had never been a hard, developed plan to implement such a dream. In Vermont, they finally developed a plan, and look what happened.”

In Europe, many countries built their universal health care systems from scratch, with some starting early last century when most citizens had no medical coverage and any services provided by governments were welcome, the Brooking Institution’s Aaron said. That allowed those countries to slowly build and expand health care systems over decades.

But in the United States private insurance arrangements between employees and employers have expanded and matured over the decades, with many people with insurance expecting a high level of medical service. So, switching to a single-payer system would need to meet those higher expectations — and higher costs — all at once, Aaron said.

“It’s easier to build from scratch than when a system is already up and running,” he said. “We could have maybe created a single-payer system 60 or so years ago, when insurance wasn’t as complete and widespread. But it would be very disruptive and costly today.”

(Ron Pollack)

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a national organization representing health care consumers, said he has long believed in the benefits of a single-payer system. But he also remembered his talks with Kennedy. The late senator, Pollack said, expressed regrets he didn’t earlier embrace insurance-based universal care, rather than holding out for a single-payer system that never materialized.

Pollack said activists might be better off pushing to improve provisions of the Affordable Care Act. “It may change in time and single-payer might become reality,” Pollack said. “But the political reality and the fiscal realities make it a very tough sell.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/25/costs-derail-vermont-single-payer-health-plan/VTAEZFGpWvTen0QFahW0pO/story.html

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

I have greatly admired Ron Pollack and Henry Aaron through the decades. They share with us our desire to expand health care justice to all. So why do I feel tormented when I hear comments from them?

Perhaps it’s because we chose different paths at the intersection of policy and politics. Ron Pollack says that he has long believed in the benefits of a single-payer system. Henry Aaron says that we could have created a single payer system sixty or so years ago. Yet Pollack says, “the political reality and the fiscal realities make it a very tough sell.” And Aaron says, “it would be very disruptive and costly today.”

Early on, Pollack decided to join forces with the neoliberal Democrats in supporting reform that would gain the support of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries – a political path with realistic potential. Aaron’s views have been more perplexing, such as when he attempted to refute a meticulous landmark study on the profound administrative waste in health care by using back-of-the-envelope numbers. We were not alone in our amazement when another very prominent health care economist said that he didn’t understand why Aaron did that.

At any rate, they both clearly understand the policy superiority of single payer. More importantly, they understand what that means when it comes to reducing suffering and financial hardship – fundamental principles in health care justice.

It wasn’t the policies that needed to be changed. It was the politics. Maybe someday Aaron and Pollack, and the multitude of others who bailed on single payer, will have an epiphany and join the effort to change the politics. How much more suffering and hardship do they have to witness before they are ready? We cannot change the errors of the past, but we can do the right thing going forward.