Health Care Professionals Favor Single-Payer Insurance By Barry Slaff of the Penn Democrats

In Insuring America’s Health (2004), the U.S. Institute of Medicine proposes that a health care system is successful when coverage is universal, continuous, affordable, sustainable, and equitable. Health care experts of all stripes agree that such a system can be achieved best through single-payer national health insurance. Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an advocacy organization of 15,000 members across the United States, argues for a comprehensive National Health Insurance Program in which an expanded and improved Medicare-like program funds privately-owned, privately-operated health care facilities. Survey results published this past March in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicate that about 60% of American physicians support such legislation, up 10% from just five years previous. This growing consensus reflects a widespread understanding that large business administrations make private, for-profit health care systems tremendously inefficient: a 2003 study published by the Harvard Medical School found that administrative costs account for a full 31% of health care expenditures in the United States, but just 4% of all Medicare expenditures. That study concludes that private insurers’ and providers’ large administrative tab results primarily from the costs of marketing, underwriting, and managing the minute details of thousands of different insurance plans. Such costs do not exist under a single-payer system.

Savings from for-profit administrative costs help publicly-funded hospitals save lives. Two Canadian Medical Association Journal studies of 26,000 hospitals in Canada and the United States demonstrate that, as reported by PNHP, “for-profits had 19 percent higher costs and 2 percent higher death rates. The authors attribute these defects directly to the for-profit nature of the hospitals: The necessity to generate revenues to satisfy investors, the significantly higher administrative costs and the large executive bonuses, they say, ‘result in limitations of care that adversely affect patient outcomes.’”

Analyses from every angle show that a national health insurance system is economically sustainable. PNHP has calculated that a single-payer insurance program financed by modest tax increases will completely offset the cost of insurance premiums and most medical bills and actually lower most people’s total medical expenses. Congressional Budget Office projections from 2007 indicate that rising health care costs– not a proportionally aging population– comprise by far the greatest hurdle to keeping health care widely accessible, but this concern affects any system, so it makes sense for us to favor the simplest, most efficient option. These comprehensive and favorable outlooks on national health insurance indicate that an American health insurance system will not succumb to the difficulties faced by other countries’ universal insurance models– models which, despite their difficulties, consistently outrank our current system in terms life expectancy, infant mortality, and overall satisfaction with accessibility.

A national health insurance program designed according to the experts’ recommendations will solve most of our problems, but not all of them; for those remaining problems, Congress can pursue additional well-advised reforms. For example, were Congress to also adopt World Health Organization recommendations for encouraging preventative care and promote cost- and life-saving technologies successfully utilized by our own Veterans’ Administration, our country’s health care outlook would see additional significant improvements.

PNHP’s national health insurance proposal is too well-supported by facts and by experts for our lawmakers to responsibly postpone action any longer. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee for president, advocates for a program very similar to the one PNHP supports, though he does not go as far as PHNP in supporting single-payer. On the other hand, John McCain, the Republican Party nominee, has submitted to the popular misconception that more for-profit competition will improve the quality of health insurance. To responsibly serve their constituents, elected officials must work to overcome this misconception and advocate for policies that a growing consensus of health professionals say will improve health care.

More on Obama’s policy can be found at BarackObama.com

See the other side

Related posts:

1. Behind Closed Doors: Insurance Companies and Clinton’s Health Care Plan
2. Consumers Favor More Healthcare Choices By Nick Smith-Wang of the Penn Republicans
3. WHAT ASPECT OF HEALTH CARE DELIVERY IS MOST IN NEED OF REFORM? By Arnold Rosoff, Professor of Health Care Management and Legal Studies

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