This Patient Can be Saved

Single Payer Health Care is a smart and proven plan

By Barbara Sprenger

Even though comprehensive health care reform in Sacramento is now on life support, this vital cause can still be resuscitated with our help.

The political leadership in our state is gridlocked over how to provide health care to the nearly 7 million Californians lacking health insurance without bankrupting the state or unfairly burdening working families or small businesses.

The Governor supports a plan that requires all working families to purchase insurance – whether affordable insurance is available or not. Many other advocates seek a new tax to support increased health care spending.

The challenge with all of these plans is that they treat the symptoms, not the cause, of our health care malaise. We won’t truly improve the health of our state until we cut the colossal waste, inefficiency and inaction out of the current health insurance system.

Currently, nearly one third of every health care dollar goes to insurance company, hospital and doctor overhead. Cost is driven up even more by a system that leaves the uninsured with no health care option other than a visit to an expensive emergency room.  And costs go even higher because we tolerate a system that focuses on pricey medical intervention, not prevention programs.

Consider some facts – the often-maligned Medicare system has an overhead of less than three percent. Compare that to the private health care system that wastes nearly one out of every three dollars.

The cost of treating a sick patient with a chronic condition in the emergency room can be more than $100,000 a year. Studies show we could save almost fifty percent by redirecting patients to primary care.

We have a medical system of private insurance that will frequently pay for a Diabetes patient to have a limb amputated, but won’t fully fund the diet counseling and physical therapy that would prevent the need for an amputation.

All of these problems do have a solution – a Single Payer system in which every Californian has choice and access to affordable primary care. It is the system that is used in virtually every other industrialized nation in the world. Our lack of this proven medical system is the reason why Americans spend nearly twice as much on health care than other comparable countries, yet have a lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and, in most respects, lower quality of care.

Our failure to reform our health care system is putting our nation at a real economic disadvantage. High wage jobs are going overseas because American companies can’t compete against businesses in nations with comprehensive health care systems. General Motors, for example, now pays more for health care than it does for steel.

As our leaders in Sacramento struggle with how to treat the disease of an unfair and inefficient health care system – let’s demand a cure.

My own life experiences have taught me that we need common-sense reform of our health care system. As a businesswoman, I have always provided health care for all of my employees, but I know first-hand how hard that can be. I lived for several years in England under a universal Single Payer health care system that I learned first-hand was fairer and more efficient than the “winner take all” health care lottery that describes the current American system.

I hope you will join me in support of a Single Payer system. State Senator Sheila Kuehl has proposed comprehensive reform based on Single Payer. Please join in support of this smart and proven plan.

Sign our petition now in support of Single Payer Health Care.

It is not too late to save real plans for reform. Sign up now to show your support for comprehensive, Single Payer health care reform.

Facts:

Medicare spends 3% on overhead: Physicians for a National Health Program

Cost of treating a sick patient in the emergency room vs. in primary care:  New York Times

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