Doctors’ Single-Payer Prescription for Health Care Reform

[think]

Doctors’ Single-Payer Prescription for Health Care Reform

By Steffie Woolhandler & David Himmelstein

05/18/2016 01:28 pm ET

Many months before Bernie Sanders entered the presidential race, we (along with Dr. Adam Gaffney, an energetic younger colleague, and Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine) convened a nonpartisan group of 39 leading physicians to envision health care reforms that would fix the glaring problems that remain despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

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At least 27 million Americans remain uninsured, and for tens of millions with insurance, sky-high copayments and deductibles (which average $5,300 in the bronze plans sold on the ACA exchanges) mean they’d be bankrupted by a serious illness. Many more people have narrow network coverage that won’t pay for care at top cancer centers or academic hospitals.

Meanwhile, giant insurers and hospital conglomerates with a single-minded focus on their bottom line increasingly dominate health care. And doctors and nurses contend with insurers’ growing demands for mind-numbing electronic documentation. These trends predated the ACA, but the law accelerated them. The ACA has also fueled medical merger mania and the health system’s administrative complexity and cost.

~Snip~

In contrast, insurance overhead is only 1.8 percent in Canada’s single-payer system, about the same overhead as in our Medicare program. And Canadian hospitals have administrative costs less than half those of their U.S. counterparts. That’s because Canadian hospitals are paid annual global budgets, like U.S. fire departments, instead of billing separately for each Band-Aid and aspirin tablet. Billing is also simple and inexpensive for Canadian physicians.

Overall, a single payer would save about $500 billion annually by trimming administrative spending to Canadian levels. Moreover, as in other nations, the single payer could use its purchasing power to lower drug prices, saving tens of billions more each year. These savings could fully cover the new costs of the coverage expansions we propose, a conclusion in keeping with past estimates by the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and private consulting groups (including one that’s owned by an insurance company)...


Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steffie-woolhandler/doctors-singlepayer-presc_b_10023842.html

Meanwhile Hillary took millions in direct income from healthcare companies and associations that have a vested interest in making sure single payer never happens. We know single payer will never happen if Hillary is president. She's made that abundantly clear.

Now one of the health care associations that paid Hillary 6 figures for a speech, The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, is leading the way in Colorado to defeat the initiative to get single payer for Coloradans.

So Hillary claims to not be influenced by the millions she takes from the health care industry, banks, and other corporations yet here she is claiming single payer is off the table just like the corporations and associations she takes money from want.

America deserves better. America deserves single payer healthcare. The USA is the only wealthy nation that doesn't provide healthcare as a right for it's citizens. It is a national shame that America lags behind the rest of the modern world in the area of health care.

Isn't it time for Democrats to stand strong and demand America join the rest of the world on this important issue?

[liberal_at_heart]

1. K&R

[Scuba]

2. Medicare for All, including dental, optical, hearing aids and mental health services.

And yes, we can afford it.