I would like to share with you why I am a proponent of a Single-Payer health system, or Medicare for all. Let me first give you a little background about my involvement in the current healthcare syste. I am a small business owner. I employ between 70 - 100 people at a given time. Most of my workers go the homes of the elderly and disabled, where they bathe, dress and feed them. Without our services, these folks would be in nursing homes, away from their families, and receiving much less individualized care. We save the State of Georgia about 25% by providing care in the home, rather than in a nursing home. So, as I like to tell new workers, this is a win, win, win, win situation:
- The client gets to stay in his/her home
- The program saves the State money
- The aide has a job
- People like me have a business
One of the ways to keep quality workers is to pay them a fair wage, and offer benefits. At this point, I can do neither. I have provided health insurance for up to 20 long term workers at a time - it was an unsustainable burden. The health insurance premiums went up an average of 25% a year. So, I have had to buy the worst plan possible, because it is all that we can afford. In fact, it is the HMO "F" plan, and aptly named. Even the medical receptionists remark that they have never seen co-payments so high. The plan is so bad, that I had to pay out-of-pocket to see my personal physician, because she didn't take HMO insurance any more. I've since had to give her up and am without a physician at the present time, while our insurance agent tries to find a plan that we can afford. And even with this lousy plan, I cannot insure a large number of people. The cost is prohibitive.
So, the very people who work in the healthcare industry can't afford to purchase health insurance. What the hell kind of sense does that make? I am currently receiving allergy injections, which my former insurance company has refused to cover, since it is a "pre-existing condition." Thankfully, they are only $30/week, so I'm able to keep up with them, as I promised my allergist I would. Thirty damn dollars a week and my insurance company won't pay for the shots, even though my premiums were around $250/month.
And that brings me to the underlying problem I have with the entire health insurance industry. They have to answer to their investors. They have to make profits in order to satisfy their investors and prove they are a successful company. And how do they make their profits? By denying people like me needed healthcare. Actually by denying people much worse off than me, allows them to make their profits. Nataline Sarkisyan, a young woman who needed a liver transplant was denied and denied and denied care. By the time her request for coverage was granted, she died the same day - an outcome that benefited the insurance company. In another instance Thomas Concannon, diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, was on the operating table for a bone marrow transplant, when the surgeons were notified that his insurance company wouldn’t cover the procedure. It is unconscionable to continue this insane system.
For about half what we pay for healthcare, Canadians receive enough quality care to outlive us by several years. Don't believe the empty platitudes about the US 'having the best healthcare system in the world.' We are actually ranked about 37 on indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates by the World Health Organization. We are the worst of the industrialized nations in terms of how we run our healthcare system. And all of the industrialized nations have some version of universal healthcare.
If you are open to learning more about the entire issue, I would suggest you read A Second Opinion, by Dr. Arnold Relman. He is a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (one of the top two most prestigious medical journals). He lays out in great detail why the current system is economically unsustainable and suggests a new model of care provision that would yield lower costs, fair compensation for physicians, as well as a way for patients to be better protected from incompetent or greedy doctors who order a lot of unnecessary tests (or fail to order the ones they should). You might also Google Wendell Potter the former insurance executive who became so disgusted with what his insurance company was doing that he quit and is now a major whistle blower. He was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers as well as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Read what he has to say about the way health insurance companies operate. He was there. He knows. We need to know, too.