YOUR TURN Health CARE
More doctors now support national health insurance
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Our health care system is broken. An estimated 47 million people now are without health insurance; another 50.3 million are underinsured. We pay the most in the industrialized world for health care, but have poorer health. In Ohio, we waste nearly $12 billion on administrative overhead from private insurance companies — more than enough to cover the uninsured in our state. The same holds true for the entire nation.
Last week, an important new study was published that reveals growing consensus among U.S. physicians and a shift in thinking over the past five years: the majority of doctors — 59 percent — now support national health insurance. Such plans typically involve a single, federally administered insurance fund that guarantees health coverage for everyone, much like Medicare does for seniors. They typically eliminate or greatly reduce the role of private insurance companies in health financing, but still allow patients to go to doctors and hospitals of their choice.
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Each day, doctors witness the waste and inefficiency of the private insurance industry that consumes 31percent of every U.S. health care dollar. By contrast, Medicare and Medicaid have only 1 to 3 percent overhead. We have also seen our patients suffer from reduced employer-based coverage or the loss of such coverage altogether, often leading to financial ruin.
Eliminating profit from health care is the fundamental difference that explains why nearly every other developed nation is able to provide basic health care for their entire population at less than half of our cost. And spending more doesn't even lead to better treatment. Profiteering from health care means that even the well-insured do not get 55 percent of the care recommended. In one study, the wealthiest insured in the United States had no better health outcomes than the lowest socioeconomic group in the United Kingdom.
It is now time for those seeking high political office to address the obstacle that the private insurance industry poses to delivering quality health care to everyone at an affordable cost. Unfortunately, none of the leading candidates offer a sound approach to solving the crisis.
Sen. John McCain proposes tax incentives to encourage the uninsured to buy coverage, but these subsidies fall far short of the cost of adequate insurance. McCain says his plan would let the "free market" work to bring down health costs. In fact, his plan would change the tax code to encourage business to drop coverage for their workers, forcing millions of workers to seek coverage in the high-cost, high-overhead individual market. His proposed tax credits are a fraction of what private health insurance costs, and far below the cost of the taxpayer-provided coverage he enjoys. Tens of millions more Americans will join the ranks of the uninsured and scantily insured; only the wealthy will be able to afford anything but bare-bones coverage.
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama offer either full or partial "mandate" models for reform. Under these models, the government would require people (or their employers) to buy private coverage, in effect criminalizing the uninsured. The incremental changes suggested by Clinton and Obama cannot solve our problems because they share the same fault as McCain's: they leave the big private insurance companies in place. State plans based on these mandate models, as in Massachusetts, have already begun to falter and fail.
What needs to be changed is the system itself. Private insurance companies must go. At one time or another, both Clinton and Obama have said they could support a single-payer national health insurance system, a kind of "Medicare for all," as a solution to the health care crisis. But they have apparently calculated that it is not politically feasible to advocate this today.
The new survey of the nation's doctors suggests otherwise — that national health insurance is not only necessary, but increasingly popular. The findings dovetail with those of an AP/Yahoo public opinion poll last December showing 65 percent of Americans favor a similar approach. We must not allow private enterprise to derail meaningful change with smear and fear tactics. We have the highest premiums in the world, and yet we cannot claim to be the best in any measure of our citizens' health.
It is time for our political leaders to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system.
Dr. Mary Jo Groves is director of Community-Mercy Urgent Care.
