Phialadelphia InQuire Commentary 7/23

Single-Payer is getting more and more press!! Let us celebrate the momentum
leading up to the inevitable passage of what 2/3rds of the American public
really wants!!!!!

Kate Loving Shenk
Nursing Career Transformation

COMMENTARY Philadelphia Inquirer 7/23

Make Pa. a health-care leader

By Linda Hunt Beckman

It's not news that the United States is the only industrialized
nation that does not have a universal health-care system. Millions
of people - 1.3 million of them Pennsylvanians - lack insurance.
Our health-care system is badly broken.

Gov. Rendell's health-care plan, Prescription for Pennsylvania,
was to help remedy this. Many considered the plan unworkable
because it failed to deal with the root cause of our dysfunctional
medical delivery system: the profit-driven insurance and pharmaceutical
industries. After battles with legislators over the costs, Rendell
announced recently that he was putting his plan on hold.

Two bills, Senate Bill 300 and House Bill 1660, called the Pennsylvania
Family and Business Health Care Security Act, have been introduced to
alleviate the state's health-care problems. They would provide
comprehensive health-care coverage, including dental and vision
services, long-term care and prescription drugs. All traditional
health-insurance premiums, co-pays and health-care deductibles
would be eliminated, and employers would no longer have to select
or administer company-sponsored health-care insurance. Coverage
for senior citizens would continue through Medicare.

The plan would be financed by a 10 percent employer-paid tax
on payrolls and a three percent personal income tax. These
funds would be added to money from Medicaid, Medicare, the
tobacco settlement, cigarette taxes, the Veterans Administration
and any lottery funds designated for health care. They would create
an estimated $48 billion trust to provide universal health care for
Pennsylvanians.

In short, health care as we know it would be replaced by a
single-payer, not-for-profit health-care system. This could
make our state a model for the rest of the country. (A bill
which would provide similar coverage for all Americans has
been stalled in Congress since 2005.)

A publicly financed health-care system would allow doctors
and hospitals to drastically reduce administrative overhead,
eliminate waste and provide substantial savings for business.
Compensation for medical malpractice claims would be provided
through a no-fault system that gives patients reasonable settlements.
The state health-care trust would be sued, not individual
providers, although doctors and patients could opt to keep
their tort rights.

The care provided under this program would not fit the notion
that Americans have of "socialized medicine." We would have to
overcome these objections:

Increased taxes. It is true that our taxes would increase,
but we no longer would have to pay premiums, co-pays, or
out-of-pocket expenses. Few of us resent spending for police
and fire departments, schools, libraries, and highways. This
would be the same kind of spending.

Waiting lists. Government financing of health care does not
cause waiting lists for elective surgery; they result from
specific flaws in health-care systems. France, Austria, and
Japan, among other countries, have created health-care models
that are superior to Canada and the United Kingdom (good as
theirs are in many ways). Better-funded, the former countries
have no waits for elective surgery.

Impersonal care. Some say government-managed health care
is impersonal. If the Family and Business Health Care Security
Act is passed, it would not change how health care is delivered,
only how it is financed. People would continue to choose their
own doctors. For example, in 2001, while visiting Austria, a
country with universal health care, I fell ill. A friend took
me to the physician she had seen all her life. Nothing could
have felt less bureaucratic.

Our state could become the cradle of liberty once again.
Let's make Pennsylvania a leader in liberating health care
from dysfunction and from myths. I urge you to call your
legislators and tell them you stand behind the Family and Business Health Care Security Act.

Linda Hunt Beckman (beckman5@verizon.net) lives and writes in Philadelphia.