Time for Single Payer (Feedback)

Two of our readers take on national health care and what Americans can – and can’t – live without.

TO THE EDITOR:

Forty-five thousand people die per year in the United States because even basic and preventive care is unavailable to many. Our national health indicators (lifespan, infant mortality, maternal mortality) rank with Third World countries rather than industrialized democracies.

In Canada, whose population and socio-economic structure is similar to the U.S., a single payer, the government, pays the bills while patients choose among providers of medical services, most of them in private practice. Everyone is covered, regardless of income, age, employment status or pre-existing condition. No one loses insurance if they lose their job or relocate across the country. Any waits in line are for elective medical services like plastic surgery rather than required, preventive or emergency care.

A single-payer system reduces administrative costs. Canada’s system has a 1 percent overhead. The U.S. Medicare system overhead is less than 4 percent. However, the for-profit HMO administrative cost is more than 20 percent overhead because of paperwork, billing and CEO salaries.

Medicare, Medicaid, government employees (including congressmen), military, subsidies to providers, etc. are already tax-supported. And Medicaid expansion in Arkansas fills some gaps. However, payroll taxes for single-payer health care are offset by the elimination of insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket costs, as well as taxes generated from Wall Street transactions. The price of prescription drugs decreases with single payer because profiteering is checked by government negotiation with pharmaceutical companies.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is the longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives. His bill, HR 676, Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act, resolves many issues with our current for-profit health care system. Like the police, firefighting, libraries, schools, parks, drinking water, road and bridge-building, military, National Guard, emergency services and disaster relief, health care is a public good that should never become a source for profiteering, but rather accessible and provided to all.

Per capita, the United States spends twice what Canada spends and four times what Britain spends while U.S. citizens continue to receive poorer quality of care. Even President Donald Trump praised single-payer health care between 1999 and 2015 (Scotland, Canada), and once again in 2017 (Australia).

Lee McQueen
Texarkana

AHCA Pre-Existing Conditions Provision Bad for Arkansas

When it comes to pre-existing health conditions, there’s no such thing as the “good ol’ days.” We can’t afford to go back in time. Before the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, insurers could charge sick people impossibly high rates.

If you had cancer or diabetes or even a Caesarean section, insurance companies labeled it a pre-existing condition and slapped you with a whopping insurance premium. Rates were so high that many people I knew had to go without health insurance. They just couldn’t afford it.

Well, here we go again. The American Health Care Act (AHCA) that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month gives the upper hand back to insurers. This is especially punishing for people age 50 to 64, who often have chronic conditions.

Nationally, 40 percent of Americans age 50 to 64 have a pre-existing condition. Arkansas would be hit especially hard as 52 percent of Arkansans ages 50 to 64 have a pre-existing condition. That means over 280,000 of our fellow Arkansans could be denied coverage or be priced out of being able to afford coverage.

The U.S. Senate plans to work on this bad bill in the coming weeks. The pre-existing conditions part should be the first section to get thrown out.

Larry Larson
Little Rock