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RECENT REPORTS FROM PHYSICIANS FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM
TWO MILLION MEDICAL BANKRUPTCIES ANNUALLY
The growing number of Americans with dangerously skimpy health insurance coverage and the need to address the problems of the insured as well as the uninsured has been highlighted. Half of US bankruptcies, affecting 2 million people annually, were attributable to illness or medical bills. Three-quarters of those bankrupted by illness were insured when they first got sick. While politicians acknowledge the need to cover the uninsured, they have ignored the worsening plight of those with coverage. Rising health care costs, skimpier policies and the cancellation of coverage when illness causes job loss have augmented the financial risk for those with insurance. This heightened risk is reflected in the 2200% increase in medical bankruptcies since 1981.
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NHI WOULD SAVE $286 BILLION ON PAPERWORK, WHLE BUSH'S MEDICARE DRUG BILL TO INCREASE BUREAUCRATIC COSTS
Health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance (NHI) 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.
The study was based on the most comprehensive analysis to date of health administration spending, including data on the administrative costs of health insurers, employers' health benefit programs, hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies, physicians and other practitioners in the United States and Canada. The authors found that bureaucracy accounts for at least 31 percent of total U.S. health spending compared to 16.7 percent in Canada.
* Look for entire Press Release at PNHP
PROMINENT PHYSICIANS TESTIFY
A group of nearly two-dozen nationally prominent physicians -- including Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Rodney Hood, the President of the National Medical Association which represents African-American
physicians and Dr. Elinor Christiansen, the President of the American Medical Women's
Association testified before Congress that only comprehensive reform of America's ailing health system will address the nation's health care crisis. The hearing
was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
"We've engaged in a massive and failed experiment in market-based medicine in the U.S." said Dr. Marcia Angell. "Rhetoric about the benefits of competition and profit-driven health care can no longer hide the reality: Our health system is in shambles. Despite spending twice as much on average on health care per person as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Japan and every other developed country, over 42 million Americans have no health care insurance at all, and tens of millions more are not covered for all their medical needs. The recession we all fear could easily push the number of uninsured to 60 million."
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
Proposal of the Physicians' Working for Single-Payer Health Insurance
SPENDS MORE THAN TWICE
The United States spends more than twice as much on health care as the average of other developed nations, all of which boast universal coverage. Yet over 42 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever, and most others are underinsured, in the sense that they lack adequate coverage for all contingencies.
Why is the U. S. so different?
The short answer is that we alone treat health care as a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, rather than as a social service to be distributed according to medical need. In our market-driven system, investor-owned firms compete not so much by increasing quality or lowering costs, but by avoiding unprofitable patients and shifting costs back to patients or to other payers. This creates the paradox of a health care system based on avoiding the sick. It generates huge administrative costs, which, along with profits, divert resources from clinical care to the demands of business. In addition, burgeoning satellite businesses, such as consulting firms and marketing companies, consume an increasing fraction of the health care dollar.
* Read entire
report from PNHP
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INSURERS ARE MAJOR INVESTORS IN BIG TOBACCO POPULAR MUTUAL FUNDS ALSO HAVE BILLIONS INVESTED IN TOBACCO
Despite calls to divest, insurers continue to be major shareholders in tobacco firms. Prudential has actually increased its stock holdings in tobacco nearly 400% -- to $892 million -- in the last 4 years, according to findings published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. "Insurance Firms' and Mutual Funds' Tobacco Habit," by three researchers at Harvard, also finds that the popular mutual fund Fidelity has major stock holdings in tobacco, including over $6.6 billion of Philip Morris stock -- 8% of the entire company.
"A health insurer that buys tobacco stocks cares more about profits than the health of its patients," said lead author Dr. Wesley Boyd. "Teachers, physicians, and those who invest their savings in mutual funds are unwitting accomplices in causing 400,000 tobacco deaths a year."
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
DESPITE ECONOMIC BOOM, NUMBER OF UNINSURED DROPS ONLY 4 PERCENT
42.6 Million Americans Lack Health Coverage, Including 10 Million Children Sept 2000 -- Despite the longest economic boom in history, the number of Americans without health insurance dipped just 4 percent last year, from 44.3 to 42.6 million, according to data released today by the Census Bureau. While minorities make up 48 percent of the uninsured, 90 percent of the drop was in non-hispanic whites, according to an analysis by Physicians for a National Health Program.
"This discouraging data proves once again that we cannot grow our way out of the health care crisis," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard. "The market is still leaving 42.6 million Americans (nearly one in every six persons) behind, up 5.2 million since 1992." The 42.6 million uninsured include over 20 million women and 10 million children -- the same number of children uninsured when the Children's Health Insurance Program was enacted.
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
Universal Health Care Briefing, Washington, DC, May 1, 2001
Congressional Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus and Hispanic Caucus
Secretary Robert Reich: "This is a terribly important hearing."
Dr. Quentin Young: "I'm confidant that when we get universal national health insurance, which will come a lot sooner than many of us in the room expect, this very hearing will be considered one of the launching pads of the beginning of that process in a fresh way."
Dr. Marcia Angell: "A fifth and final myth is that a single payer system is a good idea, but politically unrealistic. Now that is a self-fulfilling prophesy. In my opinion, the medical profession and the public would be enthusiastic about a single payer system if the facts were known and the myths dispelled."
Rep. John Conyers: "I just wanted to say that this is the best health care hearing that's ever been held in the United States' House of Representatives, and you should all be proud of yourselves."
* Read entire
report from PNHP
** March 27, 2000
Q: How would single payer insurance would provide better and more affordable care for everyone.
Single payer insurance is commonly defined as a single government fund within each state which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers, replacing the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and health plans. It would provide coverage for the 44 million who are uninsured. It would eliminate the financial threat and impaired access to care for the tens of millions who do have coverage but are unable to afford the out-of-pocket expenses because of deficiencies in their insurance plans. It would return to the patient free choice of physicians and hospitals, not just choice of restrictive health care plans. It would relieve businesses of administrative hassles and expenses of maintaining a health benefits program. It would remove from the health care equation the middleman - the insurance/managed care industry - that has wreaked havoc on the traditional patient-physician relationship, while diverting outrageous amounts of patient-care dollars to their own coffers. It would control health care inflation through constructive mechanisms of cost containment that improve allocation of our health care resources, rather than controlling costs through an impersonal business ethic that strips patients of care to improve the bottom line.
In sum, single payer national health insurance would provide access to high quality care for everyone at an affordable price. Since this would be beneficial for individuals, businesses, and even the government, why don't we have a national single payer plan? The reason: The political will has not developed because of lingering concerns over the alleged defects of such a proposal. These supposed defects have been publicized widely by those interests that for ideological, financial, or other self-serving reasons are opposed to it. Since the benefits are unimpeachable, we should look the claims of the plan's critics.
The first misgiving usually expressed is that we cannot afford to pay for comprehensive care for everyone. Every other industrialized nation provides comprehensive care to everyone at a much lower cost than our system that leaves so many out. Other nations spend 6 to 10 percent of their Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, whereas we, the wealthiest nation on earth, spend 14 percent of our GDP. We already have enough funds dedicated to health care to provide the highest quality of care for everyone. Studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, the Lewin Group and Boston University School of Public Health have shown that, under a single payer system, comprehensive care can be provided for everyone without spending any more funds than now are spent.
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
Single Payer Fact Sheet - Access and Benefits
All Americans would receive comprehensive medical benefits under single payer. Coverage would include all medically necessary services, including rehabilitative, long-term, and home care; mental health care, prescription drugs, and medical supplies; and preventive and public health measures.
Care would be based on need, not on ability to pay.
Financing
The program would be federally financed and administered by a single public insurer at the state or regional level. Premiums, copayments, and deductibles would be eliminated. Employers would pay a 7.0 percent payroll tax and employees would pay 2.0 percent, essentially converting premium payments to a health care payroll tax. 90 to 95 percent of people would pay less overall for health care. Financing includes a $2 per pack cigarette tax.
Administrative Savings
The General Accounting Office projects an administrative savings of 10 percent through the elimination of private insurance bills and administrative waste, or $100 billion in 2000. This savings would pay for providing medical care to those currently underserved.
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
A Brief History: Universal Health Care Efforts in the U.S.
Late 1800's to Medicare
The campaign for some form of universal government-funded health care has stretched for nearly a century in the U.S. On several occasions, advocates believed they were on the verge of success; yet each time they faced defeat. The evolution of these efforts and the reasons for their failure make for an intriguing lesson in American history, ideology, and character.
Other developed countries have had some form of social insurance (that later evolved into national insurance) for nearly as long as the U.S. has been trying to get it. Some European countries started with compulsory sickness insurance, one of the first systems, for workers beginning in Germany in 1883; other countries including Austria, Hungary, Norway, Britain, Russia, and the Netherlands followed all the way through 1912. Other European countries, including Sweden in 1891, Denmark in 1892, France in 1910, and Switzerland in 1912, subsidized the mutual benefit societies that workers formed among themselves. So for a very long time, other countries have had some form of universal health care or at least the beginnings of it. The primary reason for the emergence of these programs in Europe was income stabilization and protection against the wage loss of sickness rather than payment for medical expenses, which came later. Programs were not universal to start with and were originally conceived as a means of maintaining incomes and buying political allegiance of the workers.
In a seeming paradox, the British and German systems were developed by the more conservative governments in power, specifically as a defense to counter expansion of the socialist and labor parties. They used insurance against the cost of sickness as a way of "turning benevolence to power".
* Read entire
report from PNHP
**
Isn't National Health Insurance (NHI) socialized medicine? And wouldn't it require doctors to give up control? Isn't competition more efficient? The system isn't working in Canada, so why should we try it here when they are trying to privatize their system? Would you really turn 15% of our economy over to government with the efficiency of the post office, the compassion of the IRS, and the cost effectiveness of the defense department? If someone wants to pay a little more to get their MRI right away, why shouldn't they be able to?
* Read entire
report from PNHP
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MORE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
What's wrong with our health system and what is National Health Insurance?
* Read entire
report from PNHP
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