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Candace
Talmadge
Read Candace's bio and previous columns
March 6, 2009
Single-Payer Health
Care: America is Ready
Memo to Sen. Max Baucus
and other legislators on Capitol Hill: There is widespread support for
single-payer health care financing in this country. There’s even
implementation legislation, H.R. 676, already filed in the House of
Representatives.
Baucus, the Montana
Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, was speaking to
reporters recently about health care reform. “America’s not ready for
single-payer,” he remarked.
The senator apparently
does not get out much, or make even basic use of an Internet search. If
he had, he would have run across Physicians for a National Health Plan.
The PNHP web site has a continually growing list of all kinds of
organizations that have gone on record in favor of single-payer health
care financing.
Among these groups are
more than a dozen health care professional associations representing
thousands of American physicians, nurses and social workers. Indeed, a
nationwide poll published in the March 2008 issue of the Annals of
Internal Medicine showed that 59 percent of U.S. physicians
supported single-payer, up 10 percentage points from a similar survey
conducted in 2002.
Also in the public
single-payer camp are faith organizations, state governments, 25 city
and county governments around the country, civic and community
organizations like the American Library Association, the League of Women
Voters, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors and consumer groups like
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union.
Thirty-nine state
AFL-CIO federations have publicly endorsed single-payer health care
funding while a whopping 454 labor groups nationwide have expressed
their support, too. “Americans are used to employer-based health care,”
Baucus said, and while that may be accurate, that does not mean they
like it or want to keep it. In the case of health care insurance,
familiarity has bred nothing but disgust and discontent.
U.S. Rep John Conyers,
the Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has
championed single-payer legislation probably since God was a kitten.
This latest incarnation of Conyers’s bill has already garnered 59
co-sponsors in the House. The previous version in the 110th
Congress ultimately drew 90 House co-sponsors. That’s a lot of
congressional backing for something Americans supposedly don’t want.
Baucus also said that
health care reform is the single most complex piece of legislation he’s
ever tackled. If lawmakers try merely to rearrange deck chairs on the
health insurance Titantic, then yes, the whole mess will be too
convoluted to get any wind in its sails. Such pseudo-reform will sink
before it ever leaves the dock. Baucus also said he wants to develop a
uniquely American approach to health care reform with some combination
of public and private involvement.
That is exactly what HR
676 proposes. This bill would convert U.S. health care funding to a
nonprofit basis, with the sole payer being the U.S. government. Health
care delivery, however, remains in private hands. This model is already
in action in Medicare, which has a consistently higher level of doctor
and patient satisfaction compared with private insurers. Medicare’s
overhead consumes a mere 3.6 percent of spending compared with 31
percent overhead in private health care insurance, according to a
groundbreaking study published in the Aug. 31, 2003 issue of the New
England Medical Journal.
Baucus candidly
admitted that he thinks Democrats will waste “capital” if they pursue
single-payer health care. Just the opposite is the reality. Grow a
spine! Seize this once-in-a-generation chance to end the corrupting and
ludicrously costly hold that the insurance and drug industries have over
U.S. health care financing and delivery.
Bask in an ocean of
political capital for decades to come.
© 2009
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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