USA Today
12/30/02
Health care is in ‘dire need’ of remedies
By Susan Page
Gore, who announced this month that he won’t run for president in 2004, still plans to deliver a speech early next year outlining his proposal for a government-financed program that ensures health care for everyone. The so-called single-payer system is often called a “Canadian-style” plan; Gore says his version will be distinctly American. Associates say his proposal will offer a choice of plans that would be administered by private insurance companies, not the government.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-12-29-health-care-usat_x.htm
Comment: Gore’s proposal to offer a “choice of plans” suggests that he will fail to address the problems of cost shifting, adverse selection, tiering of benefits, financial barriers of cost sharing, and other flawed policies that plague our current system. Continuing with these policies and including private insurance companies as a major player also fails to utilize one of the most important advantages of a single payer approach: eliminating the waste of the administrative excesses of today’s system.
95% of Americans want something done about health care costs. Gore’s plan would do that if we were to regulate private plans by requiring mandated benefits, price controls, a “national” community rating, severe restriction of administrative spending, and other measures that might characterize a single payer system. But then, what insurance company would participate in such a system? Only our own publicly administered system could function within a set of rules that would require equity, efficiency, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability, affordability, and other features assured by a single payer system.
Let’s end the games and get on with real reform. Ronald Brownstein’s words
express the urgency of the problem (Los Angeles Times, 12/30/02):
“More families without care, longer lines in emergency rooms, more hospitals
and public clinics bleeding red ink, more kids sick at school: That’s what is looming if Washington continues to close its ears to the health-care alarm ringing now in California — and soon in state capitals from coast to coast.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-utlook30dec30,0,494996
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