Ron Stouffer is known to the readers of CS2 for his writings on Health Care and The Corporate Takeover of America. Along with Rosie Skomitz, he writes our monthly To Your Health Column. Both Ron and Rosie are known around Berks County by politicians and the public alike for their tireless advocacy of quality single-payer health care. But we can’t leave the immense job of acquainting the public with the advantages of single-payer to just a few advocates. We can all do our part to become public ambassadors for single -payer. If we tell family and friends and ask them to make sure their public representatives know in no uncertain terms that we will not accept an inferior product, we can make single-payer a reality. We ask only for what the rest of the civilized world has achieved long ago. With all of us pitching in we can create a groundswell that politicians can only ignore at their own peril. It’s up to us. We can do it. I’ve asked Ron to prepare some “talking points” for the formation of our new army of single-payer ambassadors. The result is below. Use them and let us know what questions come up so we can add more detail to our “talking points” so that they may answer any objections raised. Let’s spread the word!-Chuck

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The organization Rosie and I are working with as volunteers is www.HealthCare4AllPA.org Like the national single-payer bill HR676, our bill seeks to establish a truly universal insurance plan–one group plan–for all PA residents. It does not do what other so-called “universal” plans claim to do, that is seek universality by selling more private insurance industry policies (inferior, stripped-down, “basic” policies) to several subsets of uninsured populations, subsidized by taxpayers. That employer-based, privatized insurance model has had 75 years and more to work and we now know it cannot work either in providing universal coverage nor in providing quality benefits. Politicians get PR points for claiming they are doing something, but using this failed model will produce more failure– but much profit for their insurance industry contributors.

Our plan is simple. We keep doctors and hospitals, the providers of medical care, as private businesses just as they are currently. You have complete freedom of choice of any doctor or hospital. What we propose changing is eliminating (phasing out) the over 1000 insurance companies and HMOs with their patchwork of hundreds of thousands of “plans” or insurance groups/pools. This overlapping, duplicative privatized bureaucracy with their 1000 million-dollar CEOs and upper managements, 1000 advertising and sales departments and overhead that eats up perhaps 20-30% depending on the company would be replaced by a single, public, state insurer, (a health insurance trust or pool with 5% or less overhead) into which our dollars would be deposited and from which our medical bills would be paid. We seek the economies of scale that only a single-payer can deliver.

The benefit package for the PA group plan covers everything, including long term care (nursing home coverage). Medicare enrollees would have a ‘wrap-around’ coverage in that they would no longer need to buy Medicare Supplemental policies because our plan covers 100% of mental, vision, dental, prescription drugs, and, like all age groups, seniors would be protected by nursing home care! For the young, no need to have a job that provides health insurance. You are covered from birth to Medicare. In lieu of premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, individuals pay a modest 3% of income into the state insurance trust or pool. Businesses would not have to shop for insurance each year and trim benefit packages–they simply pay 10% of payroll into the state pool, a savings for many who, like our local school district, pay 20% of payroll for private insurance . Also, all businesses would see their Workers’ Comp cut by 50% due to this single-payer insurer plan. And again, NO deductibles, NO co-pays, NO caps, NO denials, NO pre-existing conditions in our Senate Bill 300/House Bill 1660.

Our plan does not result in rationing or waiting lines–all scare tactics employed by the insurance industry, their lobbyists, and the uninformed. Our plan recognizes that 1/6 of GDP is spent on health care and it is rising 2x to 3X inflation and pay checks. Simple math reveals that all discretionary income if not all household income will be consumed by this one “industry”in a few years. This is a bad omen for all the other businesses in the economy, the Main Street businesses, and the middle class. In my mind, either the other businesses will have to close their doors or the insurance cartels will have to fold their tents. I vote for folding the tents of the insurance corporations.

In a rational world and in a compassionate culture, single-payer would be in place right now. But in the world of “money is speech” and politicians wanting to keep their jobs at any cost, we are left having the last anachronistic health care “system” in the industrialized world. We rank #37 in the WHO rankings, and in other measures we rank poorly.

Finally, the results of the Massachusetts Plan, the “mandate” plans, and whatever other privatized, subsidized plans, including the 34 year Hawaiian experiment (still 8% uninsured), are not going as “planned”. The essential questions for politicians are: “Why would taxpayers want to subsidize inferior insurance policies that cost an arm and a leg when a far less expensive alternative with superior, second-to-none benefits for every single person is possible? Why would fiscally conservative people want to waste 20% to 30% of each health care dollar on overhead in the privatized insurance sector when a single, public, state insurer can do the job for 5% or less as mandated by our bill? Why would we want to have a “system” that kills 18,000 uninsured Americans every year (we’d declare war on any enemy that killed 18,000 of our citizens) and 1000s of insureds who think they have good insurance but are surprised to find their profit-seeking insurer denied their treatment or put them into bankruptcy by denying their claim for payment? And why would physicians want their Hippocratic Oath compromised by a profit-seeking insurance company gate-keeper, micro-manager? And why shouldn’t EVERYONE pay for health care?” Those with insurance now pay for those without it. By contrast, single-payer “assesses” everyone with an income. My Republican friends find this attractive. I find it fair.

I call our plan doctor-patient-run health care. It would save our state $10 billion annually estimated, introduce bulk purchasing of drugs, and restore dignity and compassion. To his credit, our governor said he would sign it if it reaches his desk. His own plan is a limited, insurance-friendly, subsidized re-hash of the incrementalist experiments. It is more privatized welfare for the insurance industry. Our plan has 43 co-sponsors, Rendell’s has 8 last I checked. Is your legislator or one near you on board????

Remember, the lives you save may be your children’s or grandchildren’s. Don’t they deserve the safety net of a publicly provided, not-for-profit insurer that won’t deny a needed medical treatment or make you stress out by “jumping through hoops” just to demand that the insurance company or HMO live up to the benefits specified in their contracts? And, if you have any compassion, Christian or otherwise, don’t you think every single human being deserves not just insurance coverage, but QUALITY coverage than can’t be taken away for any reason? Single payer is quality….the policies being foisted on the uninsured by the privatized insurance industry and their hired-hands in our legislature and Congress are typically not worth the paper they are written on.