- 17 Jul 2004 01:28
#383843
I have been the only candidate throughout this race with a detailed plan to provide universal health care. Others may use that phrase, but their plans leave many Americans without coverage. Under my plan, patients and doctors are put in charge of the system, instead of HMOs and private insurance companies. Patients are able to select their doctors. The costs are completely covered by the government. And we don't end up paying any more than what we're paying now. A new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen estimates that national health insurance could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States.
We're already paying for universal coverage. We're just not getting it. We're pouring a large portion of every health care dollar into the waste of the private insurance companies, their executive salaries and stock options, their lobbying and advertising. My plan would remove that waste by making the government the single payer for health care.
My plan is called Enhanced Medicare for All -- a universal, single-payer system of national health insurance, carefully phased in over 10 years. It addresses everyone's needs, including the 45 million Americans without coverage and those paying exorbitant rates for health insurance. This approach to health care emphasizes patient choice, and puts doctors and patients in control of the system, not insurance companies. And it does not cost any extra money. Coverage will be more complete than private insurance plans, encourage prevention and include prescription drugs, dental care, mental health care, and alternative and complementary medicine.
This plan is based on a bill I introduced together with Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, H.R. 676. Under this plan, individuals would not have to pay premiums, deductibles, or co-pays. Other candidates would leave the insurance companies in charge. Right now, the insurance and the pharmaceutical companies own us. We need to take our health care system back.
Health care is currently dominated by insurance firms and HMOs, institutions that are more bureaucratic and costly than Medicare. Right now, private companies are charging about 18% for administration, while the cost of Medicare administration is only 3%. People are waiting longer for appointments. Fewer people are getting a doctor of their choice. Physicians are being given monetary incentives to deny care. Pre-existing illnesses are being used to deny coverage. It's important to understand that insurance companies make more money by NOT providing health care. A single-payer system can save money by investing in preventive care, as well as by cutting out the insurance companies' profits.
Over time, my plan will remove private insurance companies from the system -- along with their waste, paperwork, profits, excessive executive salaries, advertising, sales commissions, etc -- and redirect resources to actual treatment. Insurance companies do not heal or treat anyone. Physicians and health practitioners do.
Non-profit national health insurance will actually decrease total health care spending while providing more treatment and services -- through reductions in bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures such as bulk purchasing of prescriptions drugs. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizens found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States.
How would we pay for it?
Funding for my health plan will come primarily from existing government health care spending (more than $1 trillion) and a phased-in tax on employers of 7.7% (almost $1 trillion). Employers who provide coverage are already paying 8.5%, on average. That would raise about $920 billion. In addition to that, there's already over a trillion dollars being spent a year in local, state and federal dollars for health care. The American people are already paying for universal health care; they're just not getting it.
It is time to take the profit out of health care coverage, time to provide for the American people, not for the insurance companies. I am not running for insurance salesman in chief.
The type of system I am proposing -- privately delivered health care, publicly financed -- has worked well in other countries, none of which spend as much per capita on health care as the United States. The cost-effectiveness of a single-payer system has been affirmed in many studies, including those conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office. The GAO has said: "If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."
Over the years, groups and individuals as diverse as Consumers Union, labor unions, the CEO of General Motors, the editorial boards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Physicians for a National Health Program have endorsed a single-payer approach. In the "Physicians Proposal for National Health Care," 7,782 physicians agreed that "proposals that would retain the roles of private insurers -- such as calls for tax-credits, Medicaid/CHIP expansions, and pushing more seniors into private HMOs -- are prescriptions for failure."
It is sound economics -- what actuaries call "Spreading the Risk" -- to extend Medicare to younger and healthier sectors of our population, thereby putting everyone in one insurance pool. It permanently saves and improves Medicare, while eliminating duplicative private and government bureaucracies.
While enhanced Medicare for All makes economic sense, it has not made political sense to some, due to the power of the private insurance lobby. My streamlined plan is very different from the 1993 Clinton HMO-based plan, a complex proposal that left big insurance firms in a central role. After President Clinton's "Managed Competition" plan failed without coming up for a vote, talk-radio host Jim Hightower asked President Clinton why he hadn't put forward a "simple, straightforward" single-payer plan, "instead of all this bureaucracy." Clinton replied, "I thought it would be easier to pass" a bill that left the insurance industry in place. "I guess I was wrong about that."
We're already paying for universal coverage. We're just not getting it. We're pouring a large portion of every health care dollar into the waste of the private insurance companies, their executive salaries and stock options, their lobbying and advertising. My plan would remove that waste by making the government the single payer for health care.
My plan is called Enhanced Medicare for All -- a universal, single-payer system of national health insurance, carefully phased in over 10 years. It addresses everyone's needs, including the 45 million Americans without coverage and those paying exorbitant rates for health insurance. This approach to health care emphasizes patient choice, and puts doctors and patients in control of the system, not insurance companies. And it does not cost any extra money. Coverage will be more complete than private insurance plans, encourage prevention and include prescription drugs, dental care, mental health care, and alternative and complementary medicine.
This plan is based on a bill I introduced together with Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, H.R. 676. Under this plan, individuals would not have to pay premiums, deductibles, or co-pays. Other candidates would leave the insurance companies in charge. Right now, the insurance and the pharmaceutical companies own us. We need to take our health care system back.
Health care is currently dominated by insurance firms and HMOs, institutions that are more bureaucratic and costly than Medicare. Right now, private companies are charging about 18% for administration, while the cost of Medicare administration is only 3%. People are waiting longer for appointments. Fewer people are getting a doctor of their choice. Physicians are being given monetary incentives to deny care. Pre-existing illnesses are being used to deny coverage. It's important to understand that insurance companies make more money by NOT providing health care. A single-payer system can save money by investing in preventive care, as well as by cutting out the insurance companies' profits.
Over time, my plan will remove private insurance companies from the system -- along with their waste, paperwork, profits, excessive executive salaries, advertising, sales commissions, etc -- and redirect resources to actual treatment. Insurance companies do not heal or treat anyone. Physicians and health practitioners do.
Non-profit national health insurance will actually decrease total health care spending while providing more treatment and services -- through reductions in bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures such as bulk purchasing of prescriptions drugs. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizens found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States.
How would we pay for it?
Funding for my health plan will come primarily from existing government health care spending (more than $1 trillion) and a phased-in tax on employers of 7.7% (almost $1 trillion). Employers who provide coverage are already paying 8.5%, on average. That would raise about $920 billion. In addition to that, there's already over a trillion dollars being spent a year in local, state and federal dollars for health care. The American people are already paying for universal health care; they're just not getting it.
It is time to take the profit out of health care coverage, time to provide for the American people, not for the insurance companies. I am not running for insurance salesman in chief.
The type of system I am proposing -- privately delivered health care, publicly financed -- has worked well in other countries, none of which spend as much per capita on health care as the United States. The cost-effectiveness of a single-payer system has been affirmed in many studies, including those conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office. The GAO has said: "If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."
Over the years, groups and individuals as diverse as Consumers Union, labor unions, the CEO of General Motors, the editorial boards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Physicians for a National Health Program have endorsed a single-payer approach. In the "Physicians Proposal for National Health Care," 7,782 physicians agreed that "proposals that would retain the roles of private insurers -- such as calls for tax-credits, Medicaid/CHIP expansions, and pushing more seniors into private HMOs -- are prescriptions for failure."
It is sound economics -- what actuaries call "Spreading the Risk" -- to extend Medicare to younger and healthier sectors of our population, thereby putting everyone in one insurance pool. It permanently saves and improves Medicare, while eliminating duplicative private and government bureaucracies.
While enhanced Medicare for All makes economic sense, it has not made political sense to some, due to the power of the private insurance lobby. My streamlined plan is very different from the 1993 Clinton HMO-based plan, a complex proposal that left big insurance firms in a central role. After President Clinton's "Managed Competition" plan failed without coming up for a vote, talk-radio host Jim Hightower asked President Clinton why he hadn't put forward a "simple, straightforward" single-payer plan, "instead of all this bureaucracy." Clinton replied, "I thought it would be easier to pass" a bill that left the insurance industry in place. "I guess I was wrong about that."
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