The majority of the American people want a single-payer healthcare
system Medicare for all.
The majority of doctors want it.
A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it.
But what they want doesn't appear to matter.
Why?
Because a single-payer healthcare plan would mean the death of
the private health insurance industry and reduced profits for
the pharmaceutical industry.
Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,
Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk
a lot about universal healthcare. But not one of them advocates
for single-payer because single-payer too directly confronts the
big corporate interests profiting off the miserable healthcare
system with which we are currently saddled.
"Currently, we are spending almost a third of every healthcare
dollar on administration and paperwork generated by the private
health insurance industry," said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler,
an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and
co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. "Countries
like Canada spend about half that much on the billing and paperwork
side of medicine. If we go to a single-payer system and are able
to cut the billing and paperwork costs of healthcare, that frees
up about $300 billion per year. That's the money we need to cover
the uninsured and then improve the coverage for those who have
private insurance but are under-insured."
"The idea behind single-payer is you don't have to increase
total healthcare spending," Woolhandler said in an interview
with Corporate Crime Reporter. "You take the money we are
now spending but cut the administrative fat and use that money
to cover people."
None of the declared Presidential candidates with the exception
of Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is supporting single-payer.
Last year, Kucinich and Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan),
introduced a single-payer bill, HR 676, which garnered support
of more than 75 members of the House.
Woolhandler expects that number to grow substantially this year.
And Woolhandler says grassroots activists have been mobilizing
at the state level.
"State single-payer organizations have been very active,"
she said. "Early in the process, you can get a lot of politicians
interested they want to show up at your rallies to show
support for national health insurance. But as you get closer and
closer to actual passage of a law, it is harder to keep the politicians
on board."
"The legislature in California passed a single-payer bill
last year, but everybody knew that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
was going to veto it. So, it was very easy for the politicians
to say yes, I'm going to support it. The insurance industry
did not come in and throw their millions against it. But every
time there is a real possibility of a bill coming through, the
insurance industry has weighed in very heavily against."
Woolhandler called the universal healthcare law passed in Massachusetts
by Governor Mitt Romney "a hoax."
"The core idea is the individual mandate forcing uninsured
people to go out and buy insurance," Woolhandler said. "And
if they don't buy insurance, we are going to fine them. The first
year it is an $80 fine. The second year, it's half the value of
the lowest priced policy we're talking about a $2,000 fine.
So, they are saying anyone who earns more than three times poverty
has to bear the entire price of a private insurance policy."
"Romney's bill was written by Blue Cross," Woolhandler
said. "Romney was saying he was going to offer health insurance
starting at $200 a month. And of course, that was a hoax. No insurance
policy in Massachusetts comes in at $200 a month. When Blue Cross
was asked to produce the policy, it turned out the policy was
going to cost $380 a month for a policy that had a $2000 deductible.
So, you are going to tell this poor bloke who is earning $29,400
a year that he has to go out and spend $4,000 a year on an insurance
policy. And if he gets sick, he doesn't even have any coverage
until he has spent $2,000. And that's not family coverage. That's
individual coverage."
Schwarzenegger would do the same - fine individuals for not having
insurance.
Former Senator John Edwards would have a Medicare-like system
compete with private insurance.
"Edwards plan is not going to work," Woolhandler says
flatly. "We know there is not going to be fair competition
between Medicare and the private plans. You have to take on the
private health insurance industry and tell them you are
out of here. This is an entitlement program like traditional Medicare
or Social Security. We are going to get the administrative efficiencies
you get from running it as a single program and use that to expand
coverage. That's what you have to do."
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) doesn't want to get specific.
"She is nowhere on this issue," Woolhandler says.
Ditto Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois).
But Woolhandler sees an opening.
"We are at the cusp of a new single-payer movement,"
she said. "Things have been quiet over the last eight years
or so. Nobody was talking about healthcare. But now, everyone
is talking about healthcare. And it's obvious that politicians
are realizing that healthcare can be a ticket to higher office.
So, we are about to see a real blossoming of the healthcare debate
and it will present an opening for us to get the single-payer
idea out there."
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is a board member of HealthCare-NOW!
and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and co-director
of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship
program. She is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health
Program (PNHP), an organization that educates physicians, other
health workers, and the general public on the need for a comprehensive,
high-quality, publicly-funded healthcare program, equitably accessible
to all residents of the United States. Equitable accessibility
requires, in the view of PNHP, removal of the barriers to adequate
healthcare currently faced by the uninsured, the poor, minority
populations and immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
[For a complete transcript of the question/answer format
"Interview with Stephanie Woolhandler," see 21 Corporate
Crime Reporter 9(12), February 26, 2007, print edition only.]
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/
Click
here to read any of the articles in this special BC
series on Single-Payer Healthcare.
|