Single payer Go See Sicko

June 23, 2007

There was a sneak preview of Michael Moore’s documentary about the crisis in American healthcare at the Ritz East this past Saturday. It will return June 29tth to three Philadelphia theaters—the Ritz East, the Bala, and the Bridge. Moore’s film, I have heard, is heart-breaking, convincing, and very funny (the last is no surprise, from the director of Farenheit 9/11, whatever you thought of its politics). Moore contends that the answer to unaffordable premiums, insurance companies that try to elude giving you the benefits you have paid for, poor quality care, is an state-run not-for-profit healthcare system. He wants a national plan that is supported by taxes, which is what every other advanced country in the world has. And so it is indeed news that the appearance of “Sicko” coincides with groundbreaking activity in the Pennsylvania state house on behalf of the Family & Business Health Care Security Act.

Representative Kathy Mandarino, who recently agreed to be the Prime Sponsor of this bill in the House, last week circulated a Memo seeking co-sponsors (endorsement) for it. Here in our own state we could have the kind of healthcare system—often tagged “Medicare for All”—that Moore is calling for, which would make us a model for the nation. If we get single payer health insurance here, the national bill that has been stalled in Congress (despite numerous endorsements) since 2005, a bill subtitled “Medicare for All” (HR 686), might find itself infused with new life. Both bills offer comprehensive benefits: beyond “medical” care, they offer dental, mental health, vision, chiropractic, hospice, longterm, and other kinds of health services.

Single payer simply means that the money for the health system comes out of a single tax-supported fund. Not all government-run systems around the world are exactly like that, but one of the things that unites them is that profit is NOT their objective. Yet we are not talking about anything resembling what people associate with “socialized medicine.” With the kind of health system the Pennsylvania Family and Business Healthcare Security Act and HR 676 would provide, you could go to any doctor or hospital you wanted. and there would actually be less bureaucracy than there is now. The involvement of profit-making insurance companies that act as middlemen adds costly layers of paperwork (such expenses are about 24% of the American healthcare budget) while Medicare’s overhead is only 4%. Friends in France (widely considered the nation that has the best health system) tell me they have personal relationships with their doctors, who do not have money on their minds while treating them.

Americans pay about twice as much as people in other countries for health care, and yet are less healthy. Of course the 47 million without insurance, are less healthy: less likely to have early diagnoses for disease, less likely to get preventative care. But Americans in general have a higher infant and maternal mortality rate and have a 25 % greater chance of dying early. Moore’s film, focuses of those who DO have insurance. Because health insurance in the US is an industry with profit as its goal, it tries to get out of spending money, and thus “Sicko” tells horrifying stories. One is about a woman who was refused payment for an MRI on the grounds that it was unnecessary and then found out, after having the test in Japan, that she had a brain tumor.

Like Michael Moore I believe that health insurance, unlike car insurance, should have nothing to do with profit: access to health care is a fundamental right in a democracy. All Americans should have high-quality health care: rich people should not have better health care and hence better health than poor people! We do not find this to be an obvious truth because we have been brainwashed by the medical-insurance and pharmaceutical industries which spend tremendous amounts of money to keep the truth from us, often by paying lobbyists to keep the media silent.

Thus most of us know about Rendell’s Prescription for Pennsylvania, legislation that would not offer comprehensive benefits and would not come close to covering everybody. Yet few of us even know that the Healthcare Security Act is in the state legislature (and HR 676 in Congress). But the Governor knows: At a forum in Lancaster in early April he conceded that a single-payer model of healthcare for Pennsylvanians might be better, and he acknowledged that the state’s powerful health insurance lobbies was a “hurdle.” He has promised not to veto a single payer bill if it gets through the legislature, so let’s give him a chance to keep his promise. Call or e-mail your Pennsylvania House member right after reading this, and demand he or she endorse the bill—you can find the right phone number or e-mail by going to this website: www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/find.cfm And see “Sicko”!

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