Universal interest in health care
January 14, 2008
considering we get almost no publicity, this was a reasonable article about our Lancaster conference.
LancasterOnline.com
Universal interest in health care
Conference advocates a single-payer state system
By SUZANNE CASSIDY, Staff writer
Sunday News
Published: Jan 13, 2008 12:11 AM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA – Americans know more about Britney Spears than about how the American health care system works, a health care-reform activist told a conference Saturday in Lancaster.
Dr. Walter Tsou, a former Philadelphia health commissioner, was the keynote speaker at a conference organized by HealthCare4AllPA and held at Lancaster Host Resort & Conference Center. The conference was intended to ignite grass-roots support for legislation proposing a single-payer health care system for Pennsylvania.
More than $2 trillion was spent on health care in the United States in 2006, and yet Americans aren’t quite sure what this country’s health care policy is, Tsou contended.
What is known is that a great many people — some 47 million — lack health insurance, and millions more are under-insured, Tsou said, noting that if the economy goes into recession, more people will lose their health coverage.
Moreover, he said, both the public and private sectors are facing the massive, looming burden of paying health benefits to retirees. “We are in deep, deep trouble,” Tsou said, and “the only way out of this mess is a single-payer system.”
In Pennsylvania, legislation for just such a system was introduced last June.
The Family and Business Health Care Security Act — state House Bill 1660 and Senate Bill 300 — proposes the establishment of a single-payer system, which would provide Pennsylvania residents with unlimited, comprehensive health care coverage.
The plan would replace private insurance and government programs except for Medicare and Veterans Affairs. It would pay for the malpractice insurance of participating doctors. Patients would be able to choose their own doctors and dentists, and would not have to deal with co-pays, caps or deductibles.
It would be subsidized by a 10-percent levy on payrolls and a 3-percent tax on personal income.
The legislation faces a rigorous battle from private insurance companies. Rep. Kathy Manderino (D-Philadelphia and Montgomery), the primary sponsor of the bill, told the more than 100 people at Saturday’s conference that they would need to commit themselves to the fight.
“This is a movement we need to build,” she said. “This is not something that’s going to happen overnight.”
In the meantime, Manderino said she supports Gov. Edward G. Rendell’s own proposal to provide health coverage to uninsured adults. The governor wants to extend health coverage to 767,000 uninsured Pennsylvania adults through a program he has called Cover All Pennsylvanians, or CAP.
Saturday, however, was dedicated to making a case for a comprehensive single-payer health care plan.
Gale Thomason, the director of the Water Street Clinic, a free medical and dental clinic at the Water Street Rescue Mission, was among the health-care providers who spoke.
Her clinic has 2,000 patients, including homeless people, and formerly homeless people who have jobs but remain uninsured. Her clinic, she said, also gets calls from middle-class people who are uninsured and seeking health care.
Thomason said she would love for legislators to put her out of business by establishing a universal, single-payer health plan in this state.
Alan R. Jacobs, president of Isaac’s Restaurant & Deli, was on a business panel at the conference. Jacobs said that Isaac’s provides health insurance to employees who work a minimum of 25 hours. So, his company pays roughly $750,000 for health coverage for about 200 part-time and full-time employees (the company also pays for workers’ compensation coverage).
“We work really hard to insure our employees because we feel an obligation,” Jacobs said, “but it’s within a system that to me feels broken.”
Every year, he said, his company has to review its health plan, and decide what they’re going to offer for the next year. He has no medical training, and yet he’s deciding what specialists his employees can or cannot see, and deciding what medicines will or will not be covered.
“I’m ‘The Man,’ ” he said, wryly, and his employees “have to take what I give them.”
Jacobs said he has concluded that a single-payer system would be much more efficient and much less wasteful. There would be no more squabbles between his company’s main insurer and its workers’ comp insurer over which should pay for disputed injuries. There would be fewer administrative costs.
He acknowledged that some of his business friends would heartily oppose a government-run, single-payer health care plan. But, he added, “There’s always hope good things will happen.”
Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.
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