Single-payer and the battle for health care

[IndianaGreen]

Single-payer and the battle for health care

Author: Flavio Casoy
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 02/17/09 14:54

As the curtains close on an era of reactionary rule by the most right-wing elements of the capitalist ruling class, we progressives must assess what must be done in order to promote an agenda friendly to working people in this country. A chief and undisputable crisis facing everyone is the crumbling health care system.

Every day, Americans increasingly understand the failure of our employer-based private health insurance model. As the economy continues to reel from Wall Street plundering, rising unemployment means more and more people lose their health insurance, sacrifice their homes and retirements in order to pay for mounting medical bills, and forego essential care because of high costs. Every day, shrinking city, county and state budgets result in cutbacks in essential programs, closing of critical safety-net hospitals, and reduction of staff and services in surviving hospitals — all in a context of nurse and doctor shortages; mounting racial, gender and class health disparities; and a woefully under-resourced public health infrastructure.
A solution to many of these problems is a single, guaranteed, national public health insurance program that covers everyone in our nation from birth to death for all necessary services.

This system is also known as a “single-payer system” because it would be paid for exclusively through our government instead of millions of employer and employee premiums or premiums for individually purchased insurance. It would ensure that no one goes bankrupt because of medical bills, make sure that all providers get paid for services, save the country billions of dollars, and solve many of the access problems faced by the millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans. Proponents have fought for single-payer mostly under the banner of HR 676, “The United States National Health Care Act,” an excellent bill that clearly articulates a progressive vision for reform. Single-payer is the best, most evidence-based and most rational health care reform strategy we can adopt as a country.

So why don’t we? The main reason it is so difficult to win this needed reform is the political power of the insurance industry and other entities that benefit from the current system. To date, progressive health care reform movements have not been able to generate sufficient power to overcome the enormous control these industries have over our government. Reform that leads to a single-payer system would require the elimination of these companies, and we can be certain that they will fight tooth and nail to survive

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/14526/

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. maybe the insurance companies can merge with the hospital systems or go....

These insurance entities/hospital systems could be classed as and operated as primary care systems or secondary care systems and could be regulated by the government. Or alternately the insurance companies could all merge together and become large state health trusts still regulated by the government.

Everybody pays a health tax directly to the government or to these new 'State Health Trusts' from their salaries (the poor, disabled and elderly get reduced or free healthcare). The very rich with large assets and salaries could pay more. This would be instead of the insurance premiums.

I like the British NHS. I think it works OK.