Single payer healthcare, another rant

Every time I have dealings with the healthcare system I come away deeply aggravated. Whether it is just irritation at the amazing amounts of paper having no perceptible benefit to me; or the fact that my doctor's recommendations have more to do with covering her ass than benefitting mine; or the additional fact that some new museums and art collections have been provided to us by the CEO of a healthcare organization, my annoyance knows no bounds. With all of the recent interest in universal health care I was beginning to feel some hope I might live long enough to see the mess straightened out. Today, this appeared in my email:

Dear Healthcare-NOW Network:  This is where we are after three years of work. Steffie Woolhandler of PNHP and a Member of the Board of Healthcare-NOW speaks the truth in the article below. We have to work in a very focused way now. The presidential candidates need to hear from us. The newspapers can be challenged. I received a very supportive response from one newspaper writer after he failed to mention single payer in his sweeping story about all of the corporate plans for enriching the insurance companies and the rest of the industry. The voters need to be loud and clear about single payer. And Congress needs to hear that we want them to hold hearings on single payer, H.R. 676. They need to hear it NOW during this small window of opportunity . Don’t put it off. Here is a free number you can use to call your Member and to call quite a few of the presidential candidates who are in Congress. 1-866-338-1015

The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care 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 health care 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 health care.

But not one of them advocates for single-payer ­ because single-payer too directly confronts the big corporate interests profiting off the miserable health care system we are currently saddled with.

"Currently, we are spending almost a third of every health care 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 health care, 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."

There was a lot more in that email. If you want more information go to the Healthcare Now website: www.healthcare-now.org or call 1-800-453-1305.

Let's ask Hillary and Barak and John to prove to us they are not in the pockets of the healthcare industry by working for a single payer system.

Comments

[Stacie]

I completely understand this frustration. Something should be done, since it is wrong the way the system works now. Yikes! I hope the baby boomers raise a big stink now that they are going to have to put up with all the crap that people have had to all this time. Good post.