For-profit health care costly, inefficient
Toronto Star
Sep. 19, 2005
An edited excerpt of a speech by former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow about the June 9 Supreme Court decision that quashed Quebec’s ban on private health insurance. Romanow conducted a royal commission into health care in
2001-2002:
Let’s consider a few of the major studies that have chronicled the health-care system in the United States, a system which, according to 2003 data compiled by the OECD, spends 15 per cent of its GDP on health care. In Canada, by contrast, this figure amounts to 9.9 per cent …
In a study on medical bankruptcies in the United States, which accounts for half of all bankruptcies in that country, it was reported that in 2001, between 1.9 and 2.2 million Americans filed for bankruptcy because of medical causes. Moreover, another study reveals that, in 1999, the cost of paperwork for health care in the United States amounted to $1,059 (U.S.) per capita, per year while in Canada, the figure was $307 (U.S.) per capita, per year.
These differences demonstrate the inefficiencies associated with private for-profit delivery and, more precisely, how it would impact on, in the words of some of the justices, on “human reactions.” … Simply put, single-payer systems offering universal coverage obviate the need of thousands of hours being spent designing employee health benefit plans, selecting which HMO or provider to contract with and for what basket of services, variable deductibles, eligibility of family members for benefits, the costs of signing people on – and off – benefit plans based on their employment, and on and on. And that’s before we get to the unique challenges of insuring those who frequently change employer or who go from job to job, or who are simply too ill to work.
The implied conclusion that timely access to health-care services will be improved with the establishment of a parallel private scheme flies in the face of all of the evidence with which I grappled for 18 months as royal commissioner …
Comment: Thanks to the work of David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, Elizabeth Warren and others, Romanow’s statement could be modified for the United States as follows:
The implied conclusion that timely, universal access to affordable health-care services will not be improved with the establishment of a single payer system flies in the face of all of the evidence with which Himmelstein, Woolhandler and Warren grappled for the past decade as health policy researchers…