PNHP

Eliminate Unneeded Overhead

Eliminate Unneeded Overhead

By David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler
Room for Debate Blog
New York Times, June 1, 2011

David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler are internists and professors of public health at the City University of New York. They are co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Eliminating unneeded overhead would save Medicare nearly $100 billion annually. A thicket of insurance and hospital bureaucrats and profiteers distort medical priorities and drain money from care. The most obvious are private insurers who run Medicare Advantage plans that extract overhead, averaging 15 percent, or $1,000 per senior more than overhead in traditional Medicare.

Hospitals also devote a quarter of their revenue to overhead, nearly twice what’s needed. Vast marketing departments and whole buildings that house highly paid financial schemers are the norm in our medical centers. Their goals: attract patients for profitable high tech procedures (whether needed or not); avoid the unprofitably ill (e.g. most psychiatric patients); and jack up billings by exaggerating patients’ illnesses and gaming reimbursement rules.

Rev up your scanner and you’ll find many impressive-sounding (but unimportant) diagnoses that can add thousands to a Medicare bill. Would hospitals do such a thing? Research demonstrates that such overdiagnosis is epidemic. An M.R.I. will find nasty looking knee and spine abnormalities in many Medicare-aged patients who don’t (and won’t) suffer from serious knee or back pain. Most men over 80 have a few abnormal prostate cells that will never make them sick (and won’t be helped by treatment) but can be profitably labeled “cancer.” Such overdiagnosis will bring big bonuses under Medicare’s proposed new payment rules; the risk adjustment formula will reward hospitals that label patients with more diagnoses.

Uprooting the bureaucrats will require taking the profit out of health care and simplifying our payment system. Let’s pay hospitals as we currently pay fire departments: one check each month to cover their entire operating budget, with no profit taken out and hence little reason for financial scheming. Of course, this would require a single payer reform that eliminates the need to keep track of who got each aspirin. That kind of reform has allowed Canada’s Medicare program to simultaneously cover everyone and hold down costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/06/01/what-medicare-services-to-cut-starting-today/eliminate-unneeded-overhead

National single-payer advocate at the Capitol

By Casey Seiler
Albany Times Unions, June 1, 2011

Dr. Garrett Adams, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, is swinging through the Capital Region meeting with fellow advocates for a single-payer health care system, and doing interviews with Susan Arbetter of “The Capitol Pressroom” (listen to the podcast of this morning’s show here) and WAMC’s “Vox Pop” (coming later this week).

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Adams and my sainted mother, notorious Twitter enthusiast and letter-writer Harriette Seiler, have worked on this issue together for several years in my hometown of Louisville, Ky.

Although the overall results of the 2010 elections could be read as a fairly strong rejection of the push for a single-payer system — popularly known by the shorthand of “Medicare for all” — Adams says the cause is “alive and well.” He’s heartened by more recent developments such as Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin’s decision last week to sign into law legislation that would create a single-payer program for the Green Mountain State, which could become operational by 2014 if Vermont receives necessary waivers from the feds.

“For the first time, a U.S. governmental entity has said that health care is a fundamental right for everyone in the state,” said Adams, who noted that he was seeing “a lot of energy” on other state plans, as well.

Even so, he called the Vermont plan a “work in progress,” and said he remained disappointed that the bill allows for the continued involvement of private insurers.

Adams, a pediatrician who began his day joining in grand rounds at Albany Medical Center, made it clear that it isn’t just critics of what’s been described as a government takeover of health care who remain disappointed in the federal Affordable Care Act. Those advocating for a government takeover of health care see it as a half-a-loaf measure that will ultimately evolve or fail.

“That law will have to be replaced,” Adams said. “It was a large step forward in many ways, but it falls short.”

http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/69118/national-single-payer-advocate-at-the-capitol/

Means testing Medicare

Ryan Says Rich Should Pay More as Sanders Defends Entitlements for Wealthy

By Brian Faler
Bloomberg, May 30, 2011

Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senate’s only avowed socialist, may be the chamber’s fiercest advocate of taxing the rich to cut the federal deficit. That doesn’t mean he wants to reduce their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, wants to give the wealthy big tax breaks to encourage them to invest and create jobs. He also wants to take away many of their retirement benefits.

Democrats say Social Security and Medicare have endured because they offer benefits to people of all incomes, and accuse Republicans of trying to kill the programs by stripping away their beneficiaries, beginning with the rich. Republicans say the fairest way to curb the deficit is to scale back the programs for those who need them least.

With polls showing the public supports limiting benefits to the wealthy, and some Democratic leaders signaling a willingness to consider the idea, the rich may face cuts as lawmakers debate how to curb the national debt.

Sanders, 69, said the debate isn’t just about numbers.

“The strength of Social Security and Medicare is that everybody is in,” the Vermont independent said in an interview. “Once you start breaking that universality and you say that if you’re above a certain income, two years later that income goes down and 10 years later it becomes a welfare program.”

Republicans say the waves of retiring baby boomers, as well as increasing health-care costs, are the real threats to the programs because the benefits are unsustainable.

“The thing that tears the social contract is insolvency,” said Ryan, 41, a Wisconsin Republican. “Means-testing is an obvious solution to our fiscal problems,” he said. “The alternative is everybody gets cut, so why don’t we put the money where it should go — to the people who need it.”

Representative James McDermott, a Washington Democrat, said providing benefits to those who don’t need them is a small price to pay to ensure the programs are available to everyone else.

“I don’t worry about paying a few benefits to Warren Buffett or Bill Gates,” he said. “As long as we make absolutely sure we got public support” for the programs.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-31/ryan-says-rich-should-pay-more-as-sanders-defends-entitlements-for-wealthy.html

Paying for health care and receiving health care are two different issues.

Under an ideal system, everyone should receive all essential health care services that they need without having to face financial barriers that might prevent them from accessing that care.

Since health care now has become so expensive that many cannot afford it, an ideal system would also finance that care based on the ability to pay. Those with greater means would pay more. Also, since the need for health care is very unevenly distributed, an insurance function of pooling the costs is absolutely essential.

Assuming that everyone gets the care that they need, there are two fundamental ways of paying for it. You can fund the entire costs in advance through a single risk pool. That is the simplest administratively and certainly would be the most equitable if each person contributed a given amount based on their means – most easily accomplished through progressive taxes.

The other way would be to establish a catastrophic risk pool through taxes or premiums that only partially fund care, and then assess cost-sharing payments (deductibles, co-payments, coinisurance) based on services received, at the time they are received. Since ability to pay remains an issue, to ensure access each individual would have to be means tested to determine what subsidies would be required (as in the Affordable Care Act). This greatly increases the administrative complexity and costs of financing care. The health care provider, the payer, and the patient each must account for each and every service and the allocation of responsibility for payment.

Although insurance premiums are normally thought of as a method of financing the risk pool, they have taken on a new twist in Medicare Part B (physician services) and Part D (drug benefit). Although these programs are partially funded through the tax system, the additional Part B and Part D premiums assigned to the individual beneficiaries are now means tested. In a sense, they are now accounted for as a means tested but negative benefit. The greater one’s means, the less the benefit. This is an important strategy  of the opponents of Medicare because it weakens the support of the more affluent members of our society and risks converting Medicare into a welfare program.

If all health care has already been prepaid by taxes paid into into a common risk pool, then none of this is necessary. The patient simply receives needed care, and that’s it.

Professor Leonard Rodberg, from Queens College/CUNY, has described this concept in these insightful comments (personal communication):

“The central feature of the Canadian health care system is not that it is a single payer system; it is that financial considerations do not enter into the patient’s decision to seek medical care, nor in the doctor’s decision on what treatment to recommend for the patient. It is not only that there is no exchange of money between patient and doctor; the patient has to pay no money for the visit at any time. There is no fighting with the insurance company to get a claim paid, and no complicated bookkeeping on the part of either the patient or the doctor.”

“We in PNHP have often observed that the term ‘single payer’ is not helpful in explaining what we mean by a national health program. I learned in Canada that it also doesn’t describe the essence of what we are seeking. We tend to treat the absence of cost-sharing as simply a feature of the single payer plan we want. I am now convinced that, instead, we should view the removal of financial barriers to care as the core of what we advocate: no billing of patients, no cash exchange between patient and provider, no checking with insurance companies, etc.

“Too often, we speak as if our goal is a single payer system. I believe that is a mistake. Our goal should be the removal of all financial barriers to care; a single payer system is simply a means, and not the only means, to that goal. What makes the Canadian system, and others, work so well is not its single payer character, but the fact that funding of the system is completely separated from the delivery of care. That should be what we seek through a national health program.”

Support rises for Medicare as anniversary nears

June 2, 2011

Dear PNHP colleagues and friends,

The nation is rallying in support of Medicare and advocacy for single payer is on the rise. Please join us in protecting Medicare from privatization and celebrating the work of our activists in Vermont.

The popular Medicare program will turn 46 this July. We encourage you to write letters to the editor and opinion articles to your local paper in anticipation of Medicare’s anniversary next month. Now is the time to expand and improve – not cut – Medicare. For tips on how to write letters to the editor and opinion articles, please visit the Get Active section of our website. I recommend Dr. Quentin Young’s wonderful article from last year on the history and impact of Medicare to give you an idea of how this public program changed the lives of millions overnight. If you would like assistance on editing or pitching an article, please write organizer@pnhp.org. We’re happy to help!

Last week Dr. Quentin Young wrote a scathing “thank you” note to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). As you know, Rep. Ryan put forth a proposal to destroy Medicare as we know it, effectively rallying the public. PNHP Past President Dr. Oliver Fein calls the plan “Medicare for no one.” We say, “Expand and Improve Medicare for All.” Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Young’s letter-

“Since you succeeded in securing virtual unanimous support from the Republican majority in the House of Representatives for your voucher program, the rejection of your plan has been demonstrated nationwide. The spectacular defeat of Ms. Corwin in the 26th district of New York on May 24, 2011, is clearly the earliest expression of the vital importance our nation attaches to a single-payer comprehensive health plan for the elderly, Medicare.” Read more here.

In other news, I’ve just returned from a visit to our PNHP Upstate New York Chapter where I met with local activists and the media, and presented Grand Rounds. It was a fantastic visit and I want to thank all of the activists who worked to make it possible. We at PNHP are redoubling our outreach through our Grand Rounds program. If you’re a scheduler of Grand Rounds at your hospital and interested in hosting a PNHP speaker, please click here.

Wendell Potter recently wrote a great article, “Health Insurers Have Had Their Chance,” showing the support for single payer from California to Ohio to Vermont. As Vermont moves forward with its recently-passed health reform bill, activists on the ground are working hard to ensure that a single-payer system is implemented. There is great news that PNHP Past President Dr. Deb Richter, was recently appointed to the Vermont nominating committee for the Green Mountain Care board!

We’re heartened to see so much activism around the country and the growing physician voice calling for single-payer health insurance.

Cordially,

Garrett Adams, MD, MPH
President

PS- PNHP is proud to announce a new series of special conference calls dedicated to dilating on a particular aspect of health policy. Stay tuned for dates and more information.

Vermont Passes Single-Payer Health Care, World Doesn't End

Advocates celebrate, but critics warn: A few details—like, er, funding—have yet to be worked out.

By David Goodman
Mother Jones, May 30, 2011

As Gov. Peter Shumlin took his spot on the granite steps of the Vermont State House, a row of people fanned out behind him wearing bright red t-shirts proclaiming, “Health care is a human right.” The slogan sounded noble, and wildly unrealistic. Until the governor spoke.

“We gather here today to launch the first single-payer health care system in America,” began Shumlin, a Democrat who has been governor barely four months. “To do in Vermont what has taken too long: have a health care system, the best in the world, that treats health care as a right, and not a privilege.”

Moments later, the governor made history, signing a law that sets Vermont on a course to provide health care for all of its 620,000 citizens through a European-style single payer system called Green Mountain Care. Key components include containing costs by setting reimbursement rates for health care providers and streamlining administration into a single, state-managed system. The federal health care reform law would not allow Vermont to enact single payer until 2017; Vermont is asking the administration to grant it a waiver so that it can get there even faster, by 2014.

The push for single payer system in Vermont was built slowly and methodically over the last decade, but has moved with remarkable speed since Shumlin took office in January. A few weeks after the new governor’s inauguration, the Democratic-controlled legislature convened a rare joint session to hear from Dr. William Hsiao, a Harvard economist who has been involved in designing health care systems in seven countries. Last year, the legislature commissioned Hsiao to analyze the costs and benefits of various health care options, ranging from single payer to a fully privately managed system. The soft-spoken economist told a packed state House that a single payer plan would be about 25 percent cheaper for consumers, businesses, and the government than the current system of private health insurance, saving about $500 million in just the first year.

The data emboldened Shumlin, the legislature, and the single-payer advocates who had organized throughout the past decade, even as Shumlin’s Republican predecessor dismissed their ideas. Last fall, Shumlin had campaigned on twin themes of job creation and health care reform, and he often cited his experience as the owner of a successful travel business. (“I know firsthand that the biggest obstacle to job growth is the 10, 20, 30 percent increases in insurance premiums.”) He slammed the current “unsustainable system that will…bankrupt us.”

Single payer advocates have been a constant and visible presence around the state. The independent Vermont Workers’ Center launched its “health care is a human right” campaign in 2008—inspired, said health care organizer James Haslam, by the desperate calls the Center was receiving on its workers’ hotline. “It was becoming more of a health care hotline,” he said. The group’s members went door to door, conducted numerous forums for legislators and organized health care rallies that drew thousands.

Health care providers also spoke up. Dr. Deb Richter, a family physician, moved to Vermont in 1999 from upstate New York, where she despaired at seeing her patients getting sicker and even dying as a result of problems with health insurance. As chair of Vermont Health Care for All, she gave 500 talks around the state, and helped bring along many reluctant health care providers. Richter was beaming when I saw her in the State House lobby last week. “I feel ecstatic,” she told me. “It’s like giving birth.”

Shumlin, a wiry, hyper-energetic lawmaker who often insists on shaking every hand in the crowd, staked his gubernatorial candidacy on single payer. It was a bold and risky move. The former president of the Vermont Senate, he was narrowly elected governor last fall after winning a five-way Democratic primary by some 200 votes, and defeating a popular Republican Lieutenant Governor by just 2 percent. Shumlin pointedly ignored the national Democratic strategy of tacking to the center, and instead championed progressive issues, from abortion rights to closing the state’s lone nuclear plant, to health care reform. I asked him why he’d hitched his star to single payer.

“It’s first of all a huge jobs creator, secondly we can’t sustain the current system—we are spending money faster than we are able to earn it,” he told me before heading outside to sign the bill. “So we think it’s an economic development issue as well as a human right.” But when I asked whether Vermont might a national model, the governor sounded a humble note. Major questions—such as how the program will be funded—have yet to be worked out. “You know, we are launching an ambitious effort here,” he said. “We want it in place by 2014. But I don’t think we should ask anyone to follow us until we figure it out. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Opponents have focused on the unknowns in the reform effort. Not a single Republican in the House, and only one Republican in the Senate, supported the bill. Republican Rep. Patti Komline, assistant state House minority leader, told me, “When people ask questions like how much is it going to cost and who’s gonna pay for it—they say, ‘Well this bill is more fact finding and information gathering.’ Which doesn’t make it very historic.”

Physicians for a National Health Program has also been ambivalent about the bill, saying Vermont’s law “is much more modest in its actual reach than a single-payer plan would be.” Richter, a past president of the organization, responded, “You have to think positive and continue to take action to try to get to next level and the next step. Some of the criticisms are over details that haven’t yet been worked out.”

Organized opposition to Vermont’s health reform was relatively muted in the last few months, and was mainly led by insurance agents. But advocates are bracing for an influx of national money and media. “There are definitely people who want to see this fail. We cannot let that happen,” said House Speaker Shap Smith. “We need to work together to show the way for the entire country.”

Shumlin’s early success on health care has caught the attention of Washington. In April, Congressional Democrats asked Shumlin to appear opposite Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker before a Congressional committee. In a rebuke to Walker, Shumlin talked about his approach to Vermont’s fiscal challenges. “I don’t start with collective bargaining, and I don’t start with my public pensions. I start with the true costs. In Vermont—and this is true of most of the states of the country—health care is my biggest rising cost.”

On this muggy late-May day, Shumlin reveled in the success of his signature effort. He walked over to shake hands with a group of University of Vermont medical students, conspicuous in their white lab coats. Therese Ray, a first year medical student from Denver, told me that as a result of single payer, “I will absolutely stay in Vermont.” Another med student, Larry Bodden from New Orleans, said he grew up in an uninsured household. “My family had a deep seated fear of having to go to the doctor because we didn’t have insurance. I look forward to Vermonters not having that fear.”

Gov. Shumlin suddenly called for the several hundred people who had gathered to come closer as he signed the bill. “Everybody in,” he shouted.

“Nobody out!” came the reflexive reply, a call and response version of a slogan of the grassroots single-payer campaign. Shumlin chuckled, then made the single-payer bill the law of the Green Mountain State.

David Goodman is a contributing writer for M
other Jones and coauthor of Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/vermont-single-payer-health-care

Medicare for all? Q&A with Ohio’s leading single-payer physician advocate

By Brandon Glenn
MedCity News, 5.31.11

Close observers of the U.S. health reform debate in recent years know that the proceedings have illustrated why Barack Obama can hardly be called a liberal or a progressive.

That’s because the president showed no willingness to advocate for most liberals’ top choice for reorganizing the U.S. health system — a Medicare-for-all, single-payer plan in which a single government agency handles healthcare financing while doctors largely remain private-sector workers.

So that’s why single-payer advocates are lucky to have Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), a 17,000-member organization that advocates for single-payer. “Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services … [and] patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital,” the group states.

In Ohio, PNHP’s top official is Dr. Johnathan Ross, a Toledo internist who practices and teaches at Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center. Ross, who holds a medical degree from Cornell University and a master’s in health policy from the University of Michigan, is a past president of PNHP, having served a one-year term in 2000.

The Paul Krugman look-alike is also somewhat Krugman-like in his writing: He’s penned several editorials for the Toledo Blade and Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer.

PNHP cites a litany of statistics (apparently from its own research, some of which is more than a decade old) to support its case: 31 percent of U.S. health spending goes not to patient care but administrative costs; the U.S. health system is already 60 percent publicly financed with 20 percent paid for by businesses and 20 percent from out-of-pocket costs; and for-profit, investor-owned hospitals score lower in quality but higher in cost on average than their nonprofit counterparts.

Ross spoke with MedCity News about why he believes a health system based on profit will never provide the high quality and low cost the U.S. needs, what he sees as the major weaknesses of Obama’s health reform, and how his up-close experience with an HMO led him to support single-payer.

Q: Talk a little about how your own thinking evolved to support a single-payer health system. Did you previously believe in the structure of the current U.S. system? What caused you to change your mind?
A: For about 10 years from the mid-1980s onward, my employer, Mercy Health Partners, started and ran a nonprofit HMO. I was asked to be the medical director for the health plan. It was this experience that changed my thinking completely.

I saw up-close the dirty underbelly of the insurance industry. I saw all the shady things health insurers needed to do to stay in business. Essentially, the way to make money in the health insurance business is to avoid sick people who will be costly to insure. Since 5 percent of the patients generate 50 percent of the healthcare costs, it is essential to avoid insuring these sick people if you want to stay profitable. When you see what it takes to be successful as a health insurer, you realize it has nothing to do with high-quality patient care. Our nonprofit HMO had to do the sleazy risk-rating, denials of coverage and limitations on specialist care just like the for-profit insurers if we wanted to stay in business. It was a race to the bottom.

Q: Why do you believe that a profit-based health system can’t solve the problems of access, cost and quality?
A: As long as the profit motive is there, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare equipment makers, etc. will be seeking profits rather than better health for the American public. Why would any of these industries want us to be healthy? The drugmakers and equipment makers only make money when we are sick and need to take their medications and use their equipment. The insurers design their premiums to keep a nice percentage of whatever we spend on healthcare. The more we spend, the more they make. Why would they have any interest in controlling the long-term costs of healthcare in this country when they get to keep a percentage of whatever we spend? The unhealthier we are, the more we spend and more they make.

A healthcare system should be designed to improve the health of the public, not to improve the health of corporate bottom lines. When you’re designing something, you should begin with the end in mind. If we’re designing a health system, is the end we want a fabulously profitable medical-industrial complex, or is it a fabulously healthy country?

Q: Are you generally supportive of the federal health reform law that passed last year? What do you see as its greatest strength and weakness?
A: It’s very hard for me as a single-payer advocate to be completely supportive of the Affordable Care Act, though there are many good things in it. The positives include lots of money for public health, primary care and improving our data systems with electronic health records.

As for the weaknesses, if you had a house with a crumbling foundation, would you put a third floor on it anyway? That’s what the ACA does. It takes our crumbling foundation of a private health insurance system, which leaves people about as covered as an open-back hospital gown, and adds more of the same — more Medicaid and private insurance without doing anything to reduce the system’s complexity. One of the fundamental flaws of our system is that it is way too complicated. We spend 30 percent of our health dollars on administration and chasing the money because our financing is incredibly complex. We have hundreds of different insurance companies with hundreds of different rules, so the problem with the ACA is it leaves all that complexity in place. Until we simplify the financing, we can’t simplify the system.

Q: I imagine lots of doctors oppose single-payer (whether they admit it or not) because they think it’ll lead to a reduction in their salaries. Do you find that to be true? What’s your response to that complaint?
A: We have good research on how doctors feel about national health insurance. In general, 60 percent of primary care doctors support it. Specialists are less likely to support it, but in a few specialties, such as psychiatry and general surgeons, more than half favor it. Of course, there are some physicians who are very much opposed, like the American Medical Association, but that’ll be true with any reform effort. Even though they complain of being prisoners of the insurance industry, they do not want to give up their golden handcuffs. Many doctors who were opposed to single-payer reform in the past come up to me and say, ‘I’ve been studying this and now I think you’re right. We need an improved Medicare-for-all.’ How could PNHP grow to 17,000 members otherwise? Several of the large physician groups, including the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have come out and said that Medicare-for-all is a reasonable option.

In truth, physician incomes should go up. Everyone will be covered so there will be no bad debt as there is now for patients with no or lousy insurance. Malpractice premiums will fall since about half of our premiums go to cover the care of the injured patient. Given everyone will be covered, these costs will not need to be part of our premiums. We would believe that primary care incomes should grow some and the differential between primary care and specialist incomes should narrow somewhat, but overall in our budget calculations we hold caregiver incomes stable.

Single-payer administrative simplicity saves enough money by reducing administrative costs that we can cover everyone comprehensively, with no co-pays or deductibles, give complete choice of hospital and doctor, and still spend no more than we do now. It will free us from the grip of the insurers and
the need to do a wallet biopsy looking for the green before we see the patient. We can just be good doctors again.

http://www.medcitynews.com/2011/05/medicare-for-all-qa-with-ohios-leading-single-payer-physician-advocate/

Des Moines Register: VA health system for everyone?

Why don’t we expand VA health system?

Editorial
DesMoinesRegister.com, May 29, 2011

The Register recently editorialized that it doesn’t make sense to operate a multi-billion VA health care system that runs parallel to the nation’s vast private health care system of hospitals and clinics. It serves only one segment of the population. A better option would be providing veterans health insurance, similar to Medicare for seniors. Then they would be allowed to go to any hospital or clinic, rather than having to travel long distances for care. The thousands of health care workers currently employed by the government could work in the private sector and treat more Americans.

On the opposite page (excerpt and link below), Donald Cooper, director of VA Central Iowa Health Care System, takes issue with that idea. He suggests instead that Americans should learn from the VA. It certainly does have a record of providing good care. For example, it does a better job preventing hospital-acquired infections than private hospitals. A “connected” system of facilities allows for easy access to comprehensive medical records, which can prevent unnecessary tests and medical errors.

He makes good points. And he got us thinking: Maybe the VA shouldn’t be dismantled. Maybe it should be available to everyone. What if the VA’s hospitals and clinics became THE health care system in this country?

After all, a single system would make more sense than the hodgepodge of thousands of private and public hospitals, clinics and insurer plans. The VA is wildly popular with politicians of both political parties. The program pays a fraction of what private insurance companies pay for prescription drugs, and the VA provides not only hospital care but also nursing home care. It’s comprehensive.

Perhaps it should be expanded.

Of course once some politicians figure out that is “socialized” medicine, the idea would go over like a lead balloon. The VA is truly socialized health care. The workers are employed by the government. The buildings are owned by Uncle Sam. The entire operation and all the care is funded with tax money.

This newspaper has supported a taxpayer-financed system of health insurance. Pool tax money to provide everyone with government insurance that helps pay for services offered by private hospitals, clinics and doctors. That’s what some other countries do.

We never have argued the government should also own facilities and employ workers who provide care.

But Cooper — as well as the experts and studies he refers to — certainly should give all of us something to think about. They agree “consistent, safe, high quality care requires a reliable delivery system that sets high standards of clinical practice, monitors clinical performance indicators, and employs systematic use of process improvement tools and practices.” That “best care comes from systems just like VA health care.”

What about the rest of us?

We’ll take it.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110531/OPINION03/105310334/Why-don-t-we-expand-VA-health-system-

And…

VA offers lessons for U.S. health care

By Donald C. Cooper, Director of VA Central Iowa Health Care System
DesMoinesRegister.com, May 29, 2011

As your (prior May 9) article infers, it is widely recognized that our nation is facing a growing health care crisis with a fragmented delivery system, escalating costs, and highly variable quality and financing systems that create an excessive administrative burden and incentives for overutilization of diagnostic procedures and specialized care.

Health care leaders have consistently observed that the best care requires an integrated health care system, one that treats the whole patient and coordinates care across the full continuum of services from primary care to acute specialized care, from post-surgery rehabilitation to nursing home and end-of-life care. We know that the best care comes from comprehensive integrated delivery systems – systems just like VA health care.

Health care experts also agree that consistent, safe, high quality care requires a reliable delivery system that sets high standards of clinical practice, monitors clinical performance indicators, and employs systematic use of process improvement tools and practices. The evidence shows that consistent, high quality care comes from the rigorous application of evidence-based medicine supported by a comprehensive, easily accessible, electronic patient health record. We know that the best care comes from systems just like VA health care, an integrated health system with an award winning lifetime electronic patient record that improves patient safety, enhances coordination of care, and supports consistent application of clinical guidelines and monitoring of quality indicators across 153 medical centers and over 800 community based clinics across the country.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110531/OPINION01/105310331/1036/opinion01/VA-offers-lessons-U-S-health-care

Wow! The Des Moines Register previously has supported single payer reform, but now they seem to be broadening their position by supporting a publicly owned and operated national health service – socialized medicine! Not only should everyone be covered by a universal, taxpayer-financed risk pool, but that pool should be used to pay for integrated health care – a system “just like VA health care.”

Currently there is considerable interest in integrated health care systems. The concept of accountable care organization (ACO) has been advanced as a model for integrating health care delivery. Unfortunately, ACO was narrowly defined in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which led to a proposed set of rules that have been largely rejected by the health care community. This stumbling block should not prevent us from moving forward with efforts to establish integrated health care that is designed specifically to benefit patients, much like the VA health care system.

H.R. 676, single payer legislation sponsored by John Conyers, calls for conversion of for-profit institutions of the health care delivery system into non-profit, eliminating passive investors, while being run by boards representing the public interest. The VA system would remain independent for the first ten years, at which time merging it with the single payer system would be considered. Could H.R. 676 be an incremental step towards a national health service?

Unfortunately, ACA has left our health care system highly fragmented. The first attempt to form integrated health systems through the ACO model has demonstrated that organizing within such a fragmented system is about like herding cats. Obviously a properly designed single payer system would provide the guidance and incentives to encourage patient-oriented integrated systems. What the VA system has shown us is that government ownership can much more readily facilitate health system integration. It’s already been done – by the government!

The nation most often cited for an example of a national health service is the United Kingdom. For less than half of what we are spending ($3129 vs. $7538 per capita, PPP adjusted), they have achieved most of the goals of a high-performance system that have remained elusive in the United States. Just imagine what an integrated national health service in the United States would be like at our current level of spending.

As the editorial board of the Des Moines Register says, “We’ll take it.” Anyway, it’s definitely something worth thinking about.

Health Insurers Have Had Their Chance

By Wendell Potter
The Huffington Post, 05/31/11

Of the many supporters of a single-payer health care system in the United States, some of the most ardent are small business owners who have struggled to continue offering coverage to their workers.

Among them are David Steil, a small business owner and former Republican — yes, Republican — state legislator in Pennsylvania who earlier this year became president of the advocacy group Health Care 4 All PA.

Another supporter is Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, who last Thursday signed a bill that sets the stage for the country’s first single-payer plan. If all goes as Shumlin and the bill’s many backers hope, all 620,000 Vermonters will eventually be enrolled in a state-run plan to replace Blue Cross, CIGNA and other private insurers whose business practices have contributed to the number of Vermonters without coverage — approximately 60,000 and growing.

Both men told me last week that their feelings were shaped by their backgrounds. Their experiences as businessmen convinced them that a health care system controlled by private insurers cannot be sustained, regardless of attempts to force those insurers to provide affordable access to care for all Americans. They are both skeptical that the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act will provide the fix the country needs, even with the new regulations and consumer protections.

Steil, president and owner of a small manufacturing company in Bucks County, Pa., told me he grew increasingly frustrated about having no leverage in dealing with private insurers, which demanded double-digit premiums increases every year.

Shumlin, who along with his brother took over the management several years ago of a travel business their parents founded, echoed the same frustration. Shumlin, who also served as a legislator, shared another frustration with Steil: not being able to help political constituents, many of them farmers and small business owners, who called begging for help in finding coverage.

“During my 16 years in the legislature, my staff and I were frustrated time and again trying to help people who had lost their coverage and couldn’t find a single insurer willing to offer them a policy, usually because of a preexisting condition of some kind,” Steil said. “We could deal with almost everything else, but this was one thing we could not solve. There simply was no solution.”

I know exactly what he means. I have spoken to hundreds of groups about the health insurance industry over the past two years, and invariably at least one person — and sometimes several — will grab me afterwards to ask for my advice on obtaining coverage. They assume that someone who spent two decades as an insurance company executive ought to be able to help them out.

Unfortunately, I have no better answers than Steil or Shumlin had for those constituents. If you’ve been sick in the past, or have a spouse or child who has been treated for one of hundreds of conditions insurers consider “preexisting,” about the only way you can get coverage is to convince an employer that still offers health care benefits to hire you. Good luck pulling that off in this economy.

And if you would much rather work for a small employer or become your own boss, be prepared to remain in the ranks of the uninsured.

The number of employers of any size still offering coverage dropped from 69 percent to 60 percent between 2000 and 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The decline has been much steeper among small businesses with 10 or fewer workers. In 2009, far fewer than half of them were still offering coverage.

The Affordable Care Act, which provides tax breaks to small employers if they offer coverage and subsidize premiums for their workers, might at least slow that trend. Some of the big insurance companies have reported a recent uptick in the number of small businesses offering coverage — many for the first time — as a result of those tax breaks.

But even with financial help from the government, most small companies are still finding it difficult to pay what insurance firms are demanding. Another Kaiser Family Foundation study found that health insurance premiums employers paid for their workers in 2010 stood at $13,770 for family coverage — more than double what they paid just 10 years earlier.

In a Crain’s magazine survey of 300 small businesses in Michigan earlier this month, 24 percent said they had considered cancelling their group policies in 2011, primarily because of rising premiums. Several employers in Michigan did drop coverage.

Of those that decided to offer benefits for at least another year, a growing percentage are making employees pay a heftier share of the premium, and they’re shifting them into plans with higher deductibles. A survey this month by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that 17 percent of employers offered high-deductible plans, up from 13 percent last year. PwC says that if the trend continues — and why wouldn’t it? — high deductible plans will be the most common type of coverage by 2014.

Low income individuals and families will become eligible that year for subsidies from the federal government to help them pay their premiums. But even so, Steil and Shumlin don’t believe the current system, dominated by private insurers, is sustainable in the long haul. You can’t keep shifting more of the cost of both coverage and care to people–and also make them pay increasing amounts of tax dollars in subsidies that will go straight to private insurers–and not expect people to eventually stage a rebellion.

Private insurers, say Steil and Shumlin, have had their chance to control costs and expand access and have failed miserably. It is time, they believe, to replace them with a single payer — the government.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/health-insurers-have-had_b_868946.html

My Turn: Fertile ground for a single-payer bill

By Ellen Oxfeld
Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, May. 27, 2011

Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the new health care bill into law Thursday. Many people may wonder how we came to this point. Why is it that Vermont is the first state to pass legislation that acknowledges that health care is a public good, and that the best route toward universal access and cost control is to create a health care system that is publicly funded? There are still many more steps to go be fore we reach this goal.

One thing that makes Vermont different is that the campaign for single payer in this state has been broad-based and involved multiple organizations and thousands of individuals at the grassroots level over almost two decades.

The Vermont Workers Center (VWC) is one of the groups that has done a superb job of organizing people from 2008 onward — focusing on health care as a human right. Their organizing built upon the earlier and still continuing efforts of many other individuals and groups — creating unparalleled energy around this issue.

In 2009, for instance, public meetings were held all over the state on health care and for single payer. Many were part of the VWC campaign. Other meetings were organized by independent groups including religious and community groups. Sen. Bernie Sanders also held many health care related events around the state.

These 2009 meetings followed on the heels of a 2008 campaign for H.304 — a single-payer bill for hospitals. Hundreds of people traveled to the Statehouse for several large events to advocate for H.304 in the winter of 2008, organized by Vermont Health Care for All (VTHCA). Additionally, Dr. Deb Richter of VTHCA traveled the state and spoke at more than 400 forums between 2000 and the present, introducing the concept of single payer to numerous citizen groups.

In 2005, former state Sen. Cheryl Rivers, in coordination with Richard Davis of Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health organized for single payer on Town Meeting Day, and succeeded in getting many towns to vote in support of the concept.

Large statewide demonstrations for single payer have been organized by VTHCA (1,200 people at the Statehouse in 2002) and the VWC (over a 1,000 people coming to their May Day rallies in 2009, ’10 and ’11). Smaller demonstrations for single payer also occurred almost every year at the Statehouse, and in other venues — such as a 2009 rally of several hundred people at the Obama administration’s regional health care summit in Burlington.

Unions and even business groups have also organized around the concept: several groups come to mind here including the AFL-CIO and other unions, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, and even the League of Women Voters.

Because so many groups have been involved, and so many citizens have weighed in on the issue, this state was fertile ground for lawmakers and candidates who advocated for single payer. Not all of them won, but they helped make the issue prominent. I don’t have space to list everyone here, but Anthony Pollina and Rivers come to mind. And, of course, Shumlin made single payer prominent in his campaign and won, and Sanders has long advocated for single payer and helped legitimize the reasons for it to a broad public. We should also not forget that it was Peter Shumlin, as Senate president pro-tem, who first contacted William Hsiao in December 2009 for the express purpose of inviting him to testify in the upcoming legislative session.

All of these efforts, and probably many more than space allows me to include, made for an ideal scenario in advancing the cause of single payer in the legislative agenda. Because Vermont is a state where citizens really get involved in issues, it is still possible to see legislation pass that advances the common good.

Ellen Oxfeld lives in Middlebury.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110527/OPINION02/105270314/My-Turn-Fertile-ground-single-payer-bill

Health care reform: Supporters celebrate historic signing

By Thatcher Moats
Rutland (Vt.) Herald, May 27, 2011

MONTPELIER — Amid a boisterous crowd of health care activists, lawmakers, lobbyists and administration officials, Gov. Peter Shumlin on Thursday signed into law the health care reform bill the Legislature passed earlier this month.

“We gather here today to launch the first single-payer health care system in America,” Shumlin told the crowd of roughly 200 people who gathered on the Statehouse steps for the signing ceremony.

The health care bill was the signature piece of legislation to pass through the Statehouse this year and is the latest step in what for some activists and lawmakers has been a decades-long battle to reform the health care system.

Dr. Deb Richter of Montpelier has been fighting to create a single-payer system for 22 years and since moving to Vermont in 1999 has given about 500 lectures in Vermont on the topic.

“I must say, on a personal note, this is probably one of the best days of my life,” Richter told the crowd. For Richter and others, Thursday was a time to celebrate, but they also acknowledged much of the work is yet to come and the fight is not over.

The health care bill establishes the Green Mountain Care Board, which will work to establish a health care system in Vermont that supporters contend will be less expensive for the state and for businesses and will provide coverage for all Vermonters.

It also begins to create a health benefits exchange that is required under federal law and has been described as a consumer-friendly clearinghouse for health insurance products.

But most of the work to create new ways to deliver and pay for health care has yet to be done and it could be 2017 before the state can get a federal waiver to enact a new system.

“We will hear this is an impossible goal, but all along people have said that it was impossible to get this far,” Richter said. “But here we are, and now the real work begins. We have a long road ahead of us to get this bill in place. Let’s get started — but after the party.”

Shumlin gave Richter the pen he used to sign the bill.

The signing of the law was repeatedly called “historic” on Thursday and there were shouts of “amen” and “yes” from the crowd in response to the words from the nine people who gave speeches, which in some cases took the form of impassioned rallying cries.

But opponents of the bill worry the legislation will be historic for the wrong reasons.

“We believe it’s going to be the most significant tax increase in Vermont history in order to pay for it, and they haven’t answered any of the basic questions,” said Darcie Johnston, the founder of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, a group that formed last February to oppose the trajectory of health care reform.

Throughout the legislative session, opponents attacked the lack of information about what the benefits package will look like, how much the new system will cost and how it will be financed.

Advocates of the bill say it creates a process to answer those questions.

But Rep. Patti Komline, a Republican from Dorset, said the Shumlin administration and many lawmakers have been trying to have it both ways depending on what’s “politically expedient”: They tout the bill as historic and monumental but when pressed for details downplay it as a planning document.

They say “it’s a first step in providing single-payer, government-run health care and it’s historic,” Komline said, “and then when people ask how much is it going to cost … what the level of care is going to be, the strategy shifts to say, ‘Well, this bill really is just fact finding, we’re going to get that information.’”

House Speaker Shap Smith said opponents of the bill — from a different perspective — are guilty of the same thing, demonizing the bill when all the information isn’t available.

Opponents are also critical of the fact that details about the cost and the financing of a new health care system are not scheduled to be released until after the 2012 election, and Johnson said her top goal will be to get the state officials to release the information by September 2012.

The health care bill was signed into law Thursday, but government employees have already begun the legwork of starting to figure out how to create a new health care system for the state.

Earlier this month, about 60 government employees from numerous state agencies — including the Agency of Human Services, the Department of Taxes, the Department of Human Resources and the Department of Labor — attended a day-long retreat to begin that effort.

“Core teams” of state employees will gather information for the Legislature and the Green Mountain Care Board that will be formed in the coming months, said Anya Rader Wallack, a special assistant to Shumlin for health care.

In addition to technical work, there’s also a lot of political work ahead to fight the opponents of reform, state officials reminded the crowd at the Statehouse.

“This is the beginning,” Smith said. “This is not the end. We have hard work to do. There are definitely people who want to see this fail. We cannot let that happen. We need to work together to show the way for the entire country. We can do it. Vermont has done it in the past, we can do it again.”

Also speaking at the event were Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell; Rep. Mark Larson, who chairs the House Health Care Committee; Sen. Claire Ayer, who chairs the Senate Health and Welfare Committee; Jennifer Schneider, a Burlington resident who shared her personal difficulties with the health care system; Julie Lineberger, chairwoman of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility; and Cassandra Gekas, a health care advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

Many of the speakers thanked leaders in the Senate and the House, as well as Shumlin — who placed health care reform at the top of his campaign platform — and the grassroots activists who helped pass the bill.

Walter Carpenter, a 55-year-old Montpelier resident, used words like “jubilation” and “elation” to describe what he was feeling at the signing ceremony.

Carpenter said he battled a liver disease and at the same time had to battle insurance companies to cover his care. Then he lost his job and his health insurance and had to haggle over the price of a crucial treatment.

“I had to bargain for my life,” he said.

Carpenter believes these kinds of problems will be diminished for Vermonters with a new system that covers everyone and does not have insurance tied to employment.

“So this was also a personal victory,” Carpenter said.

Vermont moving toward single-payer health care

By Zach Howard
Reuters, Thu May 26, 2011

(Reuters) – Vermont became the first state to lay the groundwork for single-payer health care on Thursday when its governor signed an ambitious bill aimed at establishing universal insurance coverage for all residents.

“This law recognizes an economic and fiscal imperative,” Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin said as he signed the bill into law at the State House.

“We must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business.”

Legislators say the plan, approved by the Democratic controlled House and Senate this spring, aims to extend coverage to all 620,000 residents while containing soaring health care costs.

A key component establishes a state health benefits exchange, as mandated by new federal health care laws, that will offer coverage from private insurers, state-sponsored and multi-state plans. It also will include tax credits to make premiums affordable for uninsured Vermonters.

The exchange, called Green Mountain Care and managed by a five-member board, will set reimbursement rates for health care providers and streamline administration into a single, unified system.

Residents and small employers will be able to compare rates from the various plans and enroll for coverage of their choosing.

As designed, the goal is an eventual state-funded and operated single-payer system.

But its sponsors say that outcome is far from certain. The plan will be phased in over several years, with an evolving financial structure that mandates a number of conditions.

Among the criteria are adoption of a financing plan by 2014; ensuring the new system costs less than the current fee-for-service one; and obtaining federal permission via a waiver to allow Vermont to proceed with the single-payer option, in around 2017.

Advocates of change say the existing fee-for-service care has a financial incentive to deliver more care, such as tests, with little attention to quality or better outcomes.

The single-payer concept was omitted from the federal health care overhaul championed by President Barack Obama, in part due to Republican criticism it meant excessive government control.

Progressives in Vermont, including Shumlin and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, have worked for years to modify the state’s health care system.

Shumlin said he recognized “people have legitimate questions” about how a single-payer plan would be financed and operated.

“We will answer those questions before the legislature takes the next step … We’ll be getting input from all Vermonters moving forward, which is essential.”

If the state secures one key federal waiver related to exchanges, Green Mountain Care could begin as early as 2014. Another waiver needed to implement the single-payer component under federal law would not be available until 2017.

Vermont’s plan calls for the board to consider the likely costs of coverage, factor in potential savings from reforms and recommended sources of revenue. It is charged with delivering a financing plan to legislators by 2013.

If that plan’s single-payer component is adopted, lawmakers would approve a budget annually.

Single-payer proponents say the present system is too expensive and excludes too many residents. Vermont has around 47,000 uninsured and 150,000 underinsured residents.

But critics are wary of what a new program will cost and which taxes would help finance it. It is not yet clear whether it would involve increases such as a higher payroll tax.

The state’s health care spending runs about $5 billion annually, with costs rising between 6.5 percent and 8.5 percent in recent years.

Some experts say a revised system would save an estimated $580 million annually, and $1.9 billion by 2019, while creating several thousand jobs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/26/us-vermont-health-idUSTRE74P89420110526