[From the Hunger Action Network of New York]
Myth: The government would dictate how physicians practice medicine.
In countries with a national health insurance system, physicians are
rarely questioned about their medical practices (and usually only in
cases of expected fraud). Compare it to today's system, where doctors
routinely have to ask an insurance company permission to perform
procedures, prescribe certain medications, or run certain tests to help
their patients.
Myth: Waits for services would be extremely long.
In countries with NHI, urgent care is always provided immediately. Other
countries do experience some waits for elective procedures (like
cataract removal), but maintaining the US's same level of health
expenditures (twice as much as the next-highest country), waits would be
much shorter or even non-existent. Compared to most other countries with
universal health care, it is the US with the long waiting times -
especially for the tens of millions without health insurance. There
would be no lines under a universal health care system in the United
States because we have about a 30% oversupply of medical equipment and
surgeons, whereas demand would increase about 15%
Myth: People will over-use the system.
Most estimates do indicate that there would be some increased use of the
system (mostly from the 42 million people that are currently uninsured
and therefore not receiving adequate health care), however the
staggering savings from a single-payer system would easily compensate
for this.
Myth: Universal Health Care Would Be Too Expensive
The United States spends at least 40% more per capita on health care
than any other industrialized country with universal health care.
Federal studies by the Congressional Budget Office and the General
Accounting office show that single payer universal health care would
save 100 to 200 billion dollars per year despite covering all the
uninsured and increasing health care benefits. The United States spends
50 to 100% more on administration than single payer systems. By lowering
these administrative costs the United States would have the ability to
provide universal health care, without managed care, increase benefits
and still save money.
Myth: A single payer system Would Result In Government Control And
Intrusion Into Health Care Resulting In Loss Of Freedom Of Choice
There would be free choice of health care providers under a single payer
universal health care system, unlike our current managed care system in
which people are forced to see providers on the insurer's panel to
obtain medical benefits. There would be no management of care under a
single payer system unlike the current managed care system which
mandates insurer pre-approval for services thus undercutting patient
confidentiality and taking health care decisions away from the health
care provider and consumer
Myth: Universal Health Care Is Socialized Medicine And Would Be
Unacceptable To The Public
Single payer universal health care is not socialized medicine. It is
health care payment system, not a health care delivery system. Health
care providers would be in fee for service practice, and would not be
employees of the government, which would be socialized medicine.
Repeated national and state polls have shown that between 60 and 75% of
Americans would like a publicly financed, universal health care system
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/health2a.htm
PHYSICIANS FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM FAQ
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#socialized
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1 comment:
1) The statement is written by Physicians for a National Health Program, an ideological bastion of the single-payer left.
2) Ideology is important because those who disseminate it believe that passionate conviction relieves them from the constraints of evidence and proof, and creates a license for "advocacy."
3) The governments of England and Canada are required to collect and publish data about waiting times for medical services. Contrary to PNHP's assertions, the data looks bad. You can look it up on the Internet easily. But the fact that PNHP is aware of this issue at all is a small step forward.
4) The most welcome note in this statement is the assertion that PNHP now favors "free choice of health care providers" and explicitly and unconditionally rejects managed care. That is a more sophisticated position than the thinking of some of PNHP's followers who are strongly opposed to anything other than primary managed care. This vociferous fringe group is being used by government to justify universal managed care as a budget device, in exchange for "incremental" change in the public health care system.
5) It is too bad that groups like PNHP can't come up with a better name than "single payer," an arcane technical term that means nothing to the small number of people who have heard it at all. The pollsters are far ahead of the "advocates" on this important issue. When you ask people about "single payer" in language they can understand, a majority of Americans are for it. But the ideologues persist in isolating themselves.
6) There are two obstacles to a national health care system in the US today:
a) Cost .... people want a "budget neutral" national plan. They do not want to pay higher taxes for it. They do not understand that cutting excessive administrative costs and insurance company profits -- and reinvesting the savings in the new plan, does not require tax increases.
b) Access to specialty care when people need something other than managed primary care: somewhere between a third to 75 percent of all Americans need health care for occasional or regular emergency, acute, chronic, disabling or rare health problems -- from broken ankles to Alzheimer's. The insurance and HMO lobbies have managed to stigmatize such services as "high cost," and promote a witch-hunt against Medicaid to divert attention from their own much more common and much more expensive deficiencies. No one favors Medicaid fraud except the criminals who are engaged in it. But the total cost of Medicaid fraud is next to nothing compared with commercial insurance and HMO overhead and profits.
Thanks for publishing this statement.
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