Single Payer and Medical Care

HEALTH CARE REFORM


The most pressing problem in the US today other than education is health care reform. Approximately 50 million people in the United States today are not covered by health insurance. 50 million more are covered by inadequate health insurance. No country spends as much of its gross national product as the United States. However, no country obtains less for its dollar then the United States. The longevity of life is less in the United States than in countries such as Cuba. This is in spite of the fact that many medications readily available in the United States are prohibited from being sent to Cuba. Also the infant mortality is less in Cuba than it is in the United States. Again Cuba has a very high black population and the problems with eclampsia that plague our black population during pregnancy. However, their survival rates are better than ours..

As an indication of the cost of medical care in the United States it has been found by corporations such as General Motors and Toyota that a midsized sedan can be manufactured in Canada for $1400 less than it can been made in the United States. The $1400 higher cost in the US is due to the higher health care costs in this country..

The employer based health insurance that exists in the United States is driven by the commercial insurance companies. The insurance companies realize that they will make their profits by covering primarily healthy people. The very people who need health care, the chronically and elderly, prohibited from being carried by the majority of commercial insurance companies in the United States. The corporations that make up the commercial insurance or insurers cannot make any excellent profit by covering site.

In the United States, approximately .30 to .33 out of every one dollar spent on medical care is involved in administrative costs rather than on actual care itself. In Canada, the administrative costs usually average approximately 3 to four cents out of every one dollar. In France, the costs are actually less than three cents. If the United States were to go to a single-payer system, there would be an immediate savings of approximately $300 billion. Administrative costs would be saved in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and in the elimination of insurance company offices.

The savings would also come about through more efficient billing in doctor’s offices. As doctors bill under different codes for various procedures, a different payment from each insurance company is made. There are multiple companies that do nothing, but coding for doctors in order to increase the fees which doctors will collect. There are also companies which go to doctors’ offices and instruct office personnel as well as doctors in the vagaries of coding. All of these procedures actually increase the amount of the health dollar, which is then involved in administrative costs. Instead of having just one code for a particular procedure, each little step in a procedure can be broken down and each step will be billed. This is called unbundling considered unethical, but most medical offices in the United States carry it out. A single payer system would eliminate unbundling and decrease costs. Single payer would give the government greater leverage in controlling costs and quality control.