Single Payer
Kevin Hayden at American Street links to an article by Don Mayer at Barkings! about his company’s health insurance problems. Don writes about the choices that small businesses are forced to make when faced with the ever rising cost of providing health insurance for their employees.
David Ansen of Newsweek reviews Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko, and makes an incredibly wrong statement:
Why, Moore asks, in a very funny montage that turns a Soviet musical propaganda movie on its head, do we readily accept free schools, libraries, police officers and firemen but blanch at the idea of free medical service?
Having not seen the movie, I’m assuming that Ansen is characterizing those things as “free,” as he makes the same mistake earlier in the article. If Moore is doing it, then Moore is wrong. None of the listed services are free, they are publicly financed. As Ron Paul would say: “there is no free lunch.”
Ansen writes a positive review of the movie, but there’s enough misinformation being spread by the usual suspects: drug companies, the for-profit hospital industry, health-insurance companies, and their bought-and-paid-for politicians – let’s try to keep the facts straight.
Another fact to keep straight is that no one is suggesting that all doctors and hospitals be acquired by the government. That is the dominate feature of socialized medicine as found in Cuba. Single payer is essentially an extension of Medicare, which is already integrated into the health care system.
The US pays nearly twice as much as any other industrialized nation for health care, and gets mediocre results for its money. If fourth graders are required to meet standards, why isn’t the health care system?
Japanese and German auto workers make more money that American auto workers, but American auto workers cost the auto industry more, simply because of the cost of health insurance. That is an expense US competitors don’t have.
The current system costs too much, doesn’t cover everyone, doesn’t deliver results, and gives competitors an advantage. How many reasons do we need to change it?
9 comments
We need to move the insurance business out of making money off of health care. We need to get enough people angry enough to do something. Sicko will help.
Ot, Bryan, I’m tagging you:
http://rantsfromtherookery.blogspot.com/2007/06/tagged.html
A lot of people also seem to think the Canadian system is a Cuban-style system. It isn’t. It’s bascially Medicare without an age limit. It doesn’t provide for everything; i.e. it doesn’t provide for dental care or vision, and prescription prices are kept low by state-imposed price controls. Also, it isn’t federal; each province handles it on their own. There are plenty of private doctors in Canada (or at least Ontario, which I’m most familiar with) and you can decide to opt out of it if you like. It may have its problems — name a program that doesn’t — but it works.
Everyone ought to spend some time in France if they want to see a proper national medical system that works. Costs less than we pay per capita here, everyone is covered, life expectancy for a Frenchman is longer than the U.S. and infant mortality is lower.
I wish I could remember where I read it, but one reviewer scoffed at Moore’s suggestion that private health insurance companies be abolished.
Not having seen the movie or read much at all about it, I don’t know if the reviewer is correct or (more likely) making up sh$t.
Much as they deserve it, I haven’t heard any reasonable plan that calls for the abolishing of private insurers. Yes, single-payer would somewhat halt their gravy train, but they could still provide supplemental insurance and make a pretty penny.
Medicare doesn’t cover every buck, and neither would single-payer. I’m sure the private insurers would be quite happy to step in, and most folks would be quite happy to buy their supplemental policies.
As you note, Bryan, the question is not what is free… basically, the answer is nothing… but how we pay for what we get, and who among us has access. The current answer to those questions seems to be “everybody who gets any healthcare pays a lot” and “nobody, except those with the wealth to pay even more, gets even civilized minimum standards of healthcare.” That would be acceptable only if there weren’t better alternatives… and only if we decide, as a society, that healthcare is a privilege rather than a right.
The “free streets” argument is particularly offensive. In Houston, as in most cities, streets are a government responsibility, but I don’t see any road contractors going hungry. Indeed, they do rather better than the rest of us. It helps to have city government in your pocket, um, I mean, good lobbyists. (Aside: why no strikethrough tags in comments?)
(Speaking of Ron Paul, when he was the only OB/GYN in Brazoria County, TX, he refused to take Medicare or Medicaid patients. Reportedly he was charitable with his services to people who could not afford them, but a fair system would not place that decision with a doctor. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege, not something to be doled out as largesse by individual physicians. I take that fact about Paul as a statement of his attitude about single-payer healthcare.)
Ellroon, I have no objection to people making money from health care; my objection is that they are making most of their money by not providing health care.
Exactly, Bobby, no one is saying a health care provider has to accept payment from a single payer system, any more than they are required to accept Medicare. Doctors and hospitals can refuse the patients except in an emergency.
The only problem with the French system, Fallenmonk, is that it is French. Our oldest ally and people freak out about them. Now, I don’t have a lot of use for Parisians, but that’s based on personal experience. OTOH, there is good food and drink to be had outside of Paris, and friendly people.
Andante, you can buy private insurance all over Europe and in Canada. You can go to medical facilities that are not part of the taxpayer systems, and wealthy people do, but everyone can go to the regular systems and things that become expensive emergencies in the US, are handled cheaply by doctor’s visits in most countries.
Steve, even the best insurance runs into the cost cutting by for-profit hospitals. The understaffing is absurd and dangerous. The mistakes made by overworked people are too often fatal. The system is broken. You are better off, financially and in terms of care, to go on a cruise ship, than go to a hospital.
There’s also good food and drink to be had, and friendly people to be found, in Paris. The worst I’ve encountered there was a little bureaucratic stubbornness, but that is sui generis and has nothing whatever to do with the national or ethnic origins of the bureaucrat. Comes to that, the French bureaucrats I’ve had to deal with have almost without exception been far more gracious and polite (and helpful) than most of the American variety it’s been my misfortune to have to contend with. And don’t even get me started on service workers.
Ah, but I was there 30 years ago, and things change, but I willingly give you Paris, while I remain outside.
The change to American bureaucrats since 9/11 has been a major PITA. Simple things have become a matter of “national security” and everything must be taken more seriously as we are all possible terrorists.
They are making getting information a bigger problem than ever, while releasing classified information for political reasons.
[…] I did my Single Payer post I should have included the cover story from Pensacola’s alt weekly, The Independent […]