Single-Payer Gets Face Time Before House Ways and Means: 'Everybody's In, Nobody's Out' Says Quentin Young

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine Bowman

A so-called public plan option won't touch the foundations of this dysfunctional, wasteful, multi-payer system of insurers. It will not provide cost control. -- Quentin Young, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program

Advocates for healthcare reform are streaming to Capitol Hill this week to give lawmakers on key healthcare reform committees their insights into the failed U.S. healthcare system and some possible fixes. Dr. Quentin Young, longtime physician friend of President Barack Obama and recent retiree from private practice in Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, spoke with BuzzFlash today about his planned testimony Wednesday in support of single-payer healthcare before the House Ways and Means Committee. Young is National Coordinator and CEO for Physicians for a National Health Program and well known around Chicago as a progressive leader on healthcare issues.

Along with committee hearings, another aspect of the advocacy push will be a D.C. rally, "The Great American Sickout." Billed as a "national rally for healthcare for all now," it is scheduled for Thursday, June 25. More activist actions in support of single-payer are suggested here.

As Young waited to board his flight to Washington Tuesday, he reviewed the benefits of single-payer and compared it to the "multi-payer system that has given us what we have today." He compared universal single-payer to Medicare and Medicaid, and described trends favoring single-payer reform.

"The data we have in an April of 2008 poll of doctors out of University of Indiana showed that 59% said 'yes,' they would prefer a government-sponsored health system based on taxation. ... That's a switch that's been coming over the years ... from a very conservative profession." Physicians have discovered that for them, "Something's worse than government. It's called corporations."

The number agreeing that government reimbursement of charges is better than corporate domination has increased by 10% in the last five years, Young noted. Government reimbursement is "much more reliable and fair" than what's coming from the private companies, Young added, and most Americans support a tax-based health system, as The New York Times reported Monday.

As for employer-based private health insurance, Young offered a very pertinent history lesson. It was during WWII, when the country had full employment but had to impose a wage and price freeze, that workers were offered employer-based health plans in lieu of raises, he recalls. "Now we have a lot of people unemployed, and it's ironic, in my mind, that at just this moment Obama should pursue an employer-based proposal." Young noted that Obama had favored single-payer when he was a state senator. "Americans' experience with employer-based insurance is very bad, and never worse than now" since so many jobs are disappearing or imperiled.

Young does not endorse a mere "public option" and cites the "Medicare Advantage" program as an example of public/private coooperation that "the insurance companies debased. Private sector insurance companies are skilled at cherry picking, or keeping sick people out of their pools. They've done this dramatically."

Young characterized Medicaid, created to provide healthcare for the poor, as a failed model due to its reliance on a variety of means testing and the blending of federal and state funds. In contrast, he described Medicare, which has covered the elderly since 1965, as "essentially a single-payer system" and "the brightest light in the spectrum of healthcare finance." Although "burdened with the most costly patients, it has served the country well."

With single-payer, Young argued, "Everybody's in, nobody's out. There's an even playing field. All of the industrialized democratic countries of the world have adopted single-payer, and the results are spectacular." In contrast, the U.S. spends twice as much per capita as the most costly single-payer countries do, "and the results are shabby."

Young and the Physicians for a National Health Program urge supporters to raise their voices in support of single-payer. "We're well aware of the enormous power of the industry. We hope very much that the public will exercise their rights" by contacting their representatives to urge enactment of a single-payer plan.

“Sixty years of failure on health care is no longer an excuse.” -- Senator Chris Dodd

Congressional Committee Chairs include:

Rep. Charles Wrangel (D-NY), Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Chairman, Education and Labor Committee

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman, Energy and Commerce Committee

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), Committee on Finance

Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-MS) and Chris Dodd (D-CN), Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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