By Jay Brock, M.D.
The Washington Post, Letters, Dec. 11, 2024
The Post’s editorial about the killing last week of a top health-care executive [“A sickness in the wake of a health insurance CEO’s slaying,” Dec. 8] should have devoted more space to one major solution available to fix the American health-care system and its myriad problems: Single-payer Medicare-for-all.
“Controlling health-care costs requires difficult trade-offs, the essential one being between access and cost,” wrote the Editorial Board. But how “difficult” trade-offs will be will depend upon what the trade-offs are. Our current system, with its tens of millions either uninsured or underinsured; with 3 out of 4 Americans worried they would not be able to pay unexpected medical bills; with for-profit health insurance companies routinely delaying and denying coverage for enrollees; with 14 million Americans carrying at least $1,000 in medical debt; with as many as 45,000 Americans dying each year because of lack of health insurance, already requires painful trade-offs for everyone except health insurance industry executives and shareholders.
However, a Medicare-for-all system that covers everyone and all medically necessary care, with contributions based on income and without obscene co-pays or deductibles, and without restricted provider networks, would shift those painful trade-offs to health insurance industry executives and shareholders.
We put more than enough money into our health-care system to allow universal affordable coverage under Medicare-for-all. We just don’t spend that money wisely in our current, profit-comes-first health insurance system. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a single-payer system could actually reduce national health expenditures.
Whether universal affordable health care becomes a reality in the near term depends on the media and in political worlds where the power to make it happen resides. Right now, from the tone of the national conversation on this issue, it appears the citizens are beyond tired of waiting for this problem to be solved.