resources wasted by private health insurance on administration and profit ... could cover all necessary medical care ...

Monday, July 2, 2007 by | Rescue Plan: Single-payer System Is The Answer To Public Health Insurance Woes | by Andrew D. Coats
...
Two generations ago, when employer-based private health insurance definitively failed to provide for the elderly and the poor, Medicare and Medicaid were enacted.

As the most recent generation of Americans has grown up, the failures of private health insurance have come to touch each of us in some personal way.

It has failed to:

* Remain affordable. Premiums, co-pays and deductibles mushroom, and employers pass their costs on to employees. Health care benefits present a sticking point in nearly every union contract.

* Cover those who have it. Health care costs related to illness are the main cause of bankruptcies in America, according to a 2005 study by Harvard professors. Astonishingly, of those who were bankrupt because of medical bills, three out of four had health insurance at the outset of their illness.

* Protect the patient-physician relationship. Insurance company interference in decisions that should be made between doctor and patient has become routine. Insurance rules delay and deny payment for diagnostic tests as well as treatments and very often control where a patient may seek care.

* Contain spending. Health costs soar, both per capita and as a percent of gross domestic product.

* Improve quality. The United States lags far behind all other developed nations on a broad index of health outcomes.

* Reverse health disparities. Consider appalling data from the Centers for Disease Control that the ratio of black to white mortality among newborn babies has worsened in recent decades. A study by former Surgeon General David Satcher showed not only that blacks continue to die sooner than whites but that the overall ratio of black to white mortality changed very little between 1960 and 2000.

* Cover the uninsured. Census Bureau data show that more than one in five Americans lack insurance for part of the year and more than one in six have no health insurance for 12 consecutive months or more.
...
Americans know from personal experience that private health insurance ties up an enormous amount of resources in administrative costs and profits at least $350 million annually, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. American and Canadian Medicare both have proven for decades that very low overhead costs are feasible in a public health program.

The resources wasted by private health insurance on administration and profit could be used instead to cover all necessary medical care, for everyone primary care, specialty care, hospital care, dental care, mental health care, home care, rehabilitation, nursing home care and prescription drugs. ...