DeAnne
Mike CrowlThe Plain Truth About Health Care Reform
August 12th 2009 04:52
I found this awesome article about healthcare reform - I just have to share it. Read the whole article here, I've only posted the highlights.
Single payer health care can eradicate the disparities and inequalities while simultaneously improving quality of care for everyone. Single payer health care is very different from socialized medicine. The two are just not the same. Single payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.
Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the means of providing medicine. Britain is an example of socialized system, as, in America, is the Veterans Health Administration. In a socialized system, the government employs the doctors and nurses, builds and owns the hospitals, and bargains for and purchases the technology. Single-payer health care is not socialized medicine. It's a system in which one institution purchases all, or in reality, most, of the care. But the payer does not own the doctors or the hospitals or the nurses or the MRI scanners. Medicare is an example of a mostly single-payer system, as is France. Both of these systems have private insurers to choose from, but the government is the dominant purchaser...
Congress is failing to adequately address healthcare reform! So far, it appears that we are squandering the most important opportunity we have. Congress is tinkering around on the fringes. Until they address the way that our healthcare system is financed, nothing much will change. It looks like (at least so far) that Congress is reluctant to address the real problem in our system - the high cost of healthcare created by the exorbitant profits taken by the insurance industry.
If we want to resolve the high cost of our health care "system" and we want to find a way to maintain and increase the quality of care and the access to care (two different things: quality and access), then, the only way we can improve both simultaneously is through reforming the system. AND, the only way to reform the system is to create single payer healthcare.
Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves one out of every six Americans completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered. It is estimated that 50% of all Americans have either no access to medical care at all, or have very little access to healthcare
The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers (insurance companies interested only in their profits). If we do not go to the single payer system, we will still be giving the insurance industry so many more unnecessary dollars - dollars that could instead (and should instead) be wisely spent on actual care to patients. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy.
The General Accounting Office (a non-partisan government office) projects an administrative savings of 10 percent through the elimination of private insurance bills and administrative waste, or more than $150 billion. That savings would pay for providing medical care to those currently underserved.
The Congressional Budget Office (another non-partisan government office) projects that single payer would reduce overall health costs by more than $225 billion despite the expansion of comprehensive care to all Americans. No other plan projects this kind of savings.
So if there are all these benefits, why are we not moving right into single payer right now? It's because of the insurance lobby. Remember, the insurance industry is tangled up with the financial industry and the banking industry. The insurance industry is virtually indistinguishable from Wall Street and the big banks.
The insurance industry is calling the shots in Washington because if we get single payer healthcare in the U.S.,the need for private insurance would be eliminated.
But what about the workers? One single payer bill currently in the House (H.R. 1200) would provide one percent of funding for retraining displaced insurance workers during its first few years of implementation.
So, even the insurance workers would be taken care of. But that's not who the lobbyists represent. They represent the powerful insurance executives.
Again, these were just the highlights of this article Read the whole article here.
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Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the means of providing medicine. Britain is an example of socialized system, as, in America, is the Veterans Health Administration. In a socialized system, the government employs the doctors and nurses, builds and owns the hospitals, and bargains for and purchases the technology. Single-payer health care is not socialized medicine. It's a system in which one institution purchases all, or in reality, most, of the care. But the payer does not own the doctors or the hospitals or the nurses or the MRI scanners. Medicare is an example of a mostly single-payer system, as is France. Both of these systems have private insurers to choose from, but the government is the dominant purchaser...
Congress is failing to adequately address healthcare reform! So far, it appears that we are squandering the most important opportunity we have. Congress is tinkering around on the fringes. Until they address the way that our healthcare system is financed, nothing much will change. It looks like (at least so far) that Congress is reluctant to address the real problem in our system - the high cost of healthcare created by the exorbitant profits taken by the insurance industry.
If we want to resolve the high cost of our health care "system" and we want to find a way to maintain and increase the quality of care and the access to care (two different things: quality and access), then, the only way we can improve both simultaneously is through reforming the system. AND, the only way to reform the system is to create single payer healthcare.
Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves one out of every six Americans completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered. It is estimated that 50% of all Americans have either no access to medical care at all, or have very little access to healthcare
The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers (insurance companies interested only in their profits). If we do not go to the single payer system, we will still be giving the insurance industry so many more unnecessary dollars - dollars that could instead (and should instead) be wisely spent on actual care to patients. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy.
The General Accounting Office (a non-partisan government office) projects an administrative savings of 10 percent through the elimination of private insurance bills and administrative waste, or more than $150 billion. That savings would pay for providing medical care to those currently underserved.
The Congressional Budget Office (another non-partisan government office) projects that single payer would reduce overall health costs by more than $225 billion despite the expansion of comprehensive care to all Americans. No other plan projects this kind of savings.
So if there are all these benefits, why are we not moving right into single payer right now? It's because of the insurance lobby. Remember, the insurance industry is tangled up with the financial industry and the banking industry. The insurance industry is virtually indistinguishable from Wall Street and the big banks.
The insurance industry is calling the shots in Washington because if we get single payer healthcare in the U.S.,the need for private insurance would be eliminated.
But what about the workers? One single payer bill currently in the House (H.R. 1200) would provide one percent of funding for retraining displaced insurance workers during its first few years of implementation.
So, even the insurance workers would be taken care of. But that's not who the lobbyists represent. They represent the powerful insurance executives.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Again, these were just the highlights of this article Read the whole article here.
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