UHCEF Article of Interest

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Judy Deutsch
Subbury Town Crier Newspaper (click here for link to article)

Universal health care is not too expensive (as the headline over John Brodkin’s article suggested it might be in the Aug. 13, issue of The Sunday Crier), but health care that includes the health insurance industry as middleman is too expensive to be universal.

That is the elephant in the room that our legislators fail to admit - perhaps because the biggest insurance companies and some hospitals spent $7.5 million lobbying them to get Chapter 58 (our present health care law) passed.

This law sets up a complicated procedure that will fill the coffers of the insurance industry and some of the big hospitals - the ones that lobbied to get it passed.

Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, pointed out that this plan will require an enormous bureaucracy to determine what insurance is fair and reasonable and to conduct the “incessant legal and regulatory wrangling” that will ensue. She said, “private insurance companies compete not by offering better healthcare, but by avoiding high risk individuals, limiting services for those they do cover, and whenever possible, shifting costs to other payers or to individuals in the form of high deductibles and co-payments.”

Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, of Boston University’s School of public Health commented, “while the new law will be able to newly insure some people, its reliance on private purchases of insurance is too costly. It lacks the money to finance solid coverage for most people who are uninsured. Just as bad, it will accelerate the erosion of coverage for the already insured.”

Indeed, one of the main reasons the law passed was that it promised to cover 90 percent of uninsured people without challenging the health care industry’s wasteful practices. But cutting waste is essential to generating enough money to finance insurance that covers the high cost of Massachusetts health care.

Because businesses, hospitals and insurers protected themselves, today’s Massachusetts mandate will force individuals and families to spend a great deal of their money. The burden falls on people who lack political power and didn’t employ lobbyists during the legislative debate.

Numerous studies have shown clearly that the health insurance industry spends up to 40 percent of each dollar we pay on administrative expenses, and that these administrative expenses include not only the completion of the myriad forms and the checking on the different requirements that are set up by the multiplicity of companies, but also marketing and lobbying.

These studies have also shown that the VA and Medicare spend as little as 4 percent for their administrative expenses, giving the people and the governments who pay for health care much more health care for their bucks.

Massachusetts had a wonderful health care bill, S 755, “an act to establish the health care trust.” It would have provided quality health care for less than the same amount that the federal, state and local governments, businesses, and individuals already pay into the Massachusetts health care system. It would have covered every Massachusetts resident and would have had no means testing or eligibility requirements - other than Massachusetts residency, and would have had regional divisions to insure equitable care throughout the state and would have given every Massachusetts resident the same comprehensive policy which would have been based on need for care, not ability to pay. Since its bills would have been paid through a single-payer, it would have provided the efficiencies needed to reduce administrative costs. It would have set aside up to 1 percent of the trust income for medical research and innovation, and would have imposed cost controls with a budget. As demonstrated in the Solutions for Progress Report, it would have saved the Commonwealth $1 billion per year. Furthermore, it would have provided the economies inherent in bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and initiate public health programs to promote a healthy MA. It would have provided continuous coverage.

But it wouldn’t have enriched the insurance companies!

Most of our legislators refused to consider it. Could it be because this plan bypasses the health insurance industry - the industry to which our state and national legislators feel it necessary to kowtow, the industry which is among the highest profit makers in the nation?

When will our legislators kowtow to us citizens by providing us with the universal single payer health care system that will meet our health care needs at less than the cost we are paying now? When will our legislators consider and pass for the second time the Universal Health Care Amendment so that we can register by our votes our demand to actually have universal health care in this state?

You will have a chance to get your legislators to work for real universal health care after a new bill is introduced for that purpose in December 2006;.You have a chance now to help insure our constitutional right to universal health care by seeing that your legislators pass the Universal Health Care amendment in the next Constitutional Convention which will probably be held on Nov. 9, 2006.

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Judy Deutsch of Sudbury is a Unitarian Universalist Minister Emerita with one master’s degree in political science and philosophy, and another in systematic theology, specializing in religion and society. In addition to having served as a parish minister, she has also taught history and political science.
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Universal Health Care Education Fund, 8 Beacon St, Ste 26, Boston, MA 02108-3722
uhcef@aol.com | 617-723-7001 | 800-383-1973 | fax 617-723-7002

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