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Physicians push for national health care program
CUMBERLAND — Everyone has the right to health care. That statement is the mantra for the members of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Wayne Spiggle, a Mineral County commissioner and physician at Tri-State Health Center and Preston-Taylor Community Health Centers, is one of more than 15,000 members rallying for a single-payer national health insurance plan.
“I am a senior physician and for years and years it’s just been so frustrating to have to do a wallet biopsy on my patient to decide, to help them decide, what kind of medical care they can afford,” he said. “When I worked in the private practice, it was so frustrating having multiple insurance companies enter into a contest with me and my organization in order to get paid.”
Mark Almberg, communications director at PNHP, agreed, saying doctors have to fight with insurance companies to have them pay the bills.
“Doctors are hiring an army of people who have to wrangle over whether this or that bill gets paid,” he said. “The private sector may have served a role in the past but, because of rising costs, it is not a workable model anymore to finance coverage.”
Almberg said with a single-payer system, such as Medicare, everyone would be covered and there would be no co-payments or deductibles.
“It would be financed by progressive taxes,” Almberg said. “Like those using Medicare, they would pay into Medicare now for later care in life. This is how most industrialized nations do it.”
Right now many people are struggling to get insurance due to pre-existing conditions or high premiums.
“We have seen how (a national health plan) has worked for millions of people, seen evidence that it has worked in other countries successfully,” Almberg said. “We have seen hybrid plans experimented with in many states and fail; seven state have tried this and they have always failed to control costs.”
Almberg said a national health plan puts everyone in one risk pool, making it economically viable because essentially, everybody is paying into it.
“If one person becomes sick, they are not penalized for higher premiums,” he said. “Cost for care is distributed through the whole nation.”
Spiggle said that a New York Times/CBS News poll taken in February 2007 found 64 percent of the general population said the federal government should guarantee health care insurance for all Americans. He adds another poll from Associated Press/Yahoo showed 65 percent support a Medicare for All system.
“The insurance industry extracts about 25 percent of the health care dollar, which is just over $2 trillion every year,” Spiggle said. “If you would reduce the 25 percent allocated to the insurance industry, that’s around $600 billion, enough to take care of everyone.”
Spiggle said in reality, a government subsidized program will help to eliminate the need for businesses and individuals to pay premiums and co-payments.
“We’re already paying for people who are uninsured by having them go to the emergency room when they get sick and where the care is more expensive,” Spiggle said in reponse to the argument that a national health system causes healthy people to pay for the sick. “The cost is represented in health care’s fee system which is translated to all of us with insurance by increasing our premiums.”
He adds an independent analysis estimated that the care of the uninsured costs the average premium payer in excess of $2,000 per year.
“By covering everyone, we actually save money,” he said. “We save money because we are preventing people from getting sick and depending on the emergency rooms for care.”
Almberg said PNHP argues that it’s important to cover everyone regardless of ability to pay and the most efficient way to do this is to eliminate high administration costs, simplifying the system and allowing people to have doctor-hospital choice.
“Anyone can get sick and anyone should be able to get care,” Almberg said.
A bill in Congress proposing a Medicare for All system, H.R. 676: United State National Health Insurance Act, was introduced in January 2007 and is sponsored by Rep. John Conyer, D-Mich., with 94 co-sponsors.
For more information, visit PNHP’s Web site at www.pnhp.org/stateactions.
Contact Tess Hill at thill@times-news.com.
