"Amazingly, this deplorable situation has not been met with righteous anger or shock."

[Sapphire Blue]

September 9, 2007

My view: Aaron E. Carroll, M.D.
Medicare-for-all would keep everyone covered


One year ago, when the U.S. Census Bureau released its figures on Americans lacking health insurance in 2005, I wrote a piece here describing the sad state of the health care system in America. Recently, the 2006 numbers were released, and things have only gotten worse.

The number of uninsured Americans has jumped by 2.2 million to 47 million. This rise in the number of people without health insurance is the biggest jump reported by the Census Bureau since 1992. There are now more uninsured people in the United States than at any time since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s.

Amazingly, this deplorable situation has not been met with righteous anger or shock. It barely made a splash in the news. Yet, these numbers represent extraordinary suffering, unnecessary disability and premature deaths -- at least 18,000 deaths per year, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Before we jump to conclusions about who is uninsured in America, some of the facts in the Census Bureau's report deserve closer attention.

More than 90 percent of the newly uninsured are families with middle or high incomes. Some 1.4 million of the newly uninsured, accounting for 64 percent of the increase, are in families making more than $75,000 per year. An additional 633,000 new uninsured, 29 percent of the increase, are in families earning between $50,000 and $75,000. More than half the newly uninsured are full-time workers.

This divergence between poverty and uninsurance is relatively new and striking. Until now, as poverty went down, uninsurance fell. Now this has changed. Health insurance is so expensive (more than $11,000 for a family policy) that even middle-class families potentially face financial ruin along with illness and injury.

Do not be fooled into thinking any of the incremental changes we have been making are going to solve this problem....

(snip)

There is one sure-fire way to make these numbers come down. It worked for seniors in the 1960s and it still works for them today. You may hear politicians demonizing government-run health insurance, but you will hear none run on a platform of eradicating Medicare; nor will any turn it down for themselves when they turn 65. Call it whatever you want: National health insurance, Medicare-for-all, "single-payer" or socialized health insurance; it doesn't matter. Research shows that Medicare-for-all could save enough on administrative waste ($350 billion) to cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for everyone else. A single-payer national health insurance system is the only way to drop the number of people lacking health insurance to zero.

Wouldn't that be nice to read in next year's Census statistics?


http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070909/OPINION01/709090358/-1/LOCAL17

[Capn Sunshine]

1. Wouldn't that be cool? Eliminate the profit motive from health care?

Let's put this together, and give people a choice.
National single payer or for-profit health insurance. Let the 300million dollar bonuses go back into the subscribers pockets instead.

Wow I must be some kind of commie.

[Catchawave]

4. That's how my auto insurance works....

We get an annual "safe driver" bonus check of a few hundred dollars.

[Adelante]

2. Exactly the health care system we need

Take the profit out and have the government be responsible for providing health care. Only Kucinich has it right, I think.

[stillcool]

3. always amazes me...

How..at this late date...there are still those who base public opinion on the media. Worse yet there are many that believe it...If it isn't on CNN or in a government report, it isn't true.

[LibDemAlways]

5. The people in a position to enact a national

single-payer program for all already have their own excellect health insurance. They also receive big money from big pharma and for-profit health-related corporations. And their wealthy contributors' health care needs are met by the finest doctors at the best hospitals. They simply don't have incentive to worry about the little guy's health care, any more than they worry about him when they pass bills that allow his job to be outsourced, the food he eats not to be inspected, the interest rates on his credit cards to go through the roof, the school his kid attends to be underfunded and on and on.

The poor and middle class in this country are treated with nothing but contempt by lawmakers, and the little guys are too exhausted from trying to make ends meet to work up the outrage to unite and do anything about it.

[brer cat]

6. Two key points.

"Yet, these numbers represent extraordinary suffering, unnecessary disability and premature deaths -- at least 18,000 deaths per year, according to the Institute of Medicine."

"Research shows that Medicare-for-all could save enough on administrative waste ($350 billion) to cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for everyone else."

So much suffering that can be eliminated by simply reducing "waste." Why is this so difficult to achieve?