Letters to the editor
The Oregonian
November 24, 2009
The article “Study: More uninsured die in ER” (Nov. 17) and the accompanying sidebar story on health care reform costs deserve a comment.
The article states that trauma patients without insurance are 80 percent more likely to die than those with insurance. This follows research that shows, after adjusting for age, sex and race/ethnicity, uninsured adults are at least four times as likely as the insured to report delaying or foregoing needed health services, that cancer patients without insurance are twice as likely to die over a 5-year span than their insured counterparts and that those without insurance have an overall death rate higher than those who are insured leading to 45,000 deaths a year.
Clearly leaving 15 percent or 50 million people uninsured in our country leads to suffering and death and should be unacceptable in our rich country.
The current federal health reform legislation’s answer is to insure most Americans by mandating citizens buy private insurance. Unfortunately the private insurance industry and its related bureaucracy and administration waste $400 billion a year and leave many millions more underinsured and laden with medical bills.
Furthermore, since there are no effective cost controls in the legislation, we will be unable to subsidize private insurance when premiums rise at 10 percent a year as they have historically.
Eventually, premiums will rise too high and the number of uninsured will rise again or insurance companies will charge lower premiums but skimp on coverage and pass more of our health care costs on to the individual and family.
The problem of the uninsured and their shamefully worse health outcomes as well as ongoing medical debt and bankruptcy will continue.
The only way to insure everyone while containing costs at the same time is to eliminate private insurance and create a single pool of all Americans — single-payer national health insurance. By enrolling everyone in the same risk pool financed with progressive premium payments to the government, which then pays doctors and hospital bills for everyone, we can offer comprehensive care without co-pays, deductibles and cost shifting to 100 percent of Americans.
As Harvard health care economist and architect of Taiwan’s popular single-payer health care system William Hsiao says, “You can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.”
DR. PETER MAHR
Southeast Portland
http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2009/11/single-payer_supposition_medic.html