15,000 physicians urge enactment of single-payer system

[irishbobcat]

15,000 physicians urge enactment of single-payer system

November 10, 2008


A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on
President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to "do
the right thing" and enact a single-payer national
health insurance plan, a system of public health care
financing frequently characterized as "an improved
Medicare for all."

"Our country is hailing the remarkable and historic
victory of Barack Obama and the mandate for change the
electorate has awarded him," said Dr. Quentin Young,
national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health
Program.

"In large measure Sen. Obama's victory and the victories
of his allies in the House and Senate were propelled by
mounting public worries about health care," he said.
"Yet the prescription offered during the campaign by the
president-elect and most Democratic policy makers - a
hybrid of private health insurance plans and government
subsidies - will not resolve the problems of our
dangerously dysfunctional system.

"We've seen such hybrids repeatedly fail in state-based
experiments over the past 20 years in Oregon, Minnesota,
Washington and several other states, including
Massachusetts, whose second go-round at incremental
reform is already faltering," Young said.

"The only effective cure for our health care woes is to
establish a single, publicly financed system, one that
removes the inefficient, wasteful, for-profit private
health insurance industry from the picture," he said.
"Single payer has a proven track record of success -
Medicare being just one example - and is the only
medically and fiscally responsible course of action to
take."

"A solid majority of physicians endorse such an
approach," Young said. "An April 2008 study in the
Annals of Internal Medicine shows 59 percent of U.S.
physicians support national health insurance. Opinion
polls show two-thirds of the public also supports such a
remedy. Now, with strong political leadership, this
reform is within reach."

Young said the adoption of a single-payer health system
can be a "major component of the new president's
economic rescue of Main Street."

"We see no value in trying to bail out the private
health insurance industry, an unsustainable system of
financing care that has outlived its usefulness," he
said. "By contrast, a single-payer plan would provide
direct and much-needed relief to millions of American
households at a time of great economic hardship."

"Only a single-payer system can achieve the goal of
comprehensive and affordable care for all," he said,
noting that the estimated $350 billion administrative
savings realized by replacing private insurers would be
enough to cover all of the country's uninsured and to
end co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. "This
would be the perfect way for President Obama to get the
country back on track."

"Patients would be able to go to the doctors and
hospitals of their choice and not have to worry about
being able to afford it," he said, "and the single-payer
system's ability to do bulk purchasing, planning and
global budgeting would rein in costs."

Young noted that Obama has said more than once that he
is a supporter of a single-payer universal health care
program, and that if he were "starting from scratch," he
would favor adopting one. In 2003, Young said, then
Illinois state Sen. Obama remarked that "first we have
to take back the White House, we have to take back the
Senate, and we have to take back the House."

Young remarked: "Tuesday's election has made all of
these conditions happen. In his first 100 days,
President Obama has a window of opportunity to inspire
the nation by championing the enactment of single-payer
national health insurance under the slogan, 'Everybody
in, nobody out.' Such a plan is embodied in the U.S.
National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676, introduced by
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and co-sponsored by more
than 90 others, more than any other health reform
legislation."

Young noted that at least five additional supporters of
single-payer health reform were elected to Congress
yesterday, including Senator-elect Tom Udall (D-N.M.),
and that pro-single-payer ballot initiatives in 10
Massachusetts legislative districts "won by a landslide,
on average receiving 73 percent of the vote."

"Adopting a nationwide single-payer system will build on
the great achievement of Medicare, further unify our
people, strengthen our country's economic
competitiveness and assure President Obama's legacy as
an American hero," Young  said.

Single-payer healthcare- the time has come.
Thinking Green,
Dennis Spisak