Roy: Single payer system is path to universal care
At the end of a long presentation outlining new services, new doctors, new facilities and a growth in income this year at a rate greater than the growth of the economy, Dr. Kent Palmberg, the unusually savvy and successful senior vice-president and chief medical officer of Stormont Vail HealthCare, sighed and quietly said, "I'm not sure where all this is going, but we'll probably end up with something like Medicare for all."
He added, "I'm not sure that's all bad. They pay promptly, predictably and adequately, with a minimum of paperwork. That beats costly fighting with scores of insurance companies, plus caring for the many uninsured."
Palmberg's audience was about 35 retired physicians, men and women who had provided good medical care for Kansans over some, or all, of the last 50 years, and who participated in the unprecedented growth of our profession.I watched closely. None flinched, none shook his head or raised her hand to register an objection.
Everyone is coming to the obvious conclusion: single payer is the only practical solution.
- DCblogger's blog
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Medicare: "They pay promptly, predictably and adequately,
with a minimum of paperwork." plus, everybody would be covered. everybody could get health care. what's not to like?
some of the comments in that thread were really depressing, but this one takes the cake so far: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.- according to the Bible. And that applies to healthcare,
Some misconceptions show up
both in the comments and in the main article.
In the article: single payer-universal care system, which, in one form or another, has been adopted by every other industrial democracy
This is not so; France, Germany, the Netherlands, just to name three off the top of my head, have mixed systems that provide universal coverage. The usual ratio of public to private funding seems to be in the neighborhood of 2 to 1.
The first commenter, lamentably, confuses single-payer systems with socialized medecine as in the U.K.
I couldn't stand to read much farther down.
(Sorry for absence of linky goodness, my notes are in disarray at the moment.)
Policy not party!
that confusion will be common
To some extent it will be deliberate confusion sewn by those who stand to gain from confusion, and to soe extent it will be because people genuinely don't know the difference between the Canadian system and the UK National Health Service.
I just had this conversation
I recently hurt my knee during a move, and when it wasn't healing as fast as I'd like, I went in for treatment at a chiropractor who does Active Release Technique (which is extraordinarily painful, but incredibly, incredibly effective). I'd gone to him for treatment of a similar problem on my other leg two years earlier. They pulled my records and asked me if I still had Oxford for insurance. I said no, I'm uninsured right now, since my COBRA ran out and I've essentially decided to take my chances since I haven't found an affordable group policy.
So the doctor and I got into a discussion about health care in general and insurance. He's dropping Oxford since it got taken over by United Health and the UH people deny pretty much every claim. And this after he renewed his own employees' policy for Oxford, since UH assured him nothing would change.
He was very vehement that Medicare was the only way to go. He didn't know about HR 676, but I told him about it.
I think that if the employers, especially the large ones, get on board with Medicare for all, it's a done deal. The insurance lobby, powerful as it is, can't stand against the combined weight of all other American business interests.