‘Medicare for All’

To the Editor;
Single payer health care, sometimes referred to as “Medicare for All”, is the 900-pound gorilla sitting quietly in the corner during health care discussions. Fifty-eight percent of us support it. Now that the American Health Care Act has been put on hold, maybe even more people will be open to taking a look.

All other developed countries finance their health care, either directly or indirectly. At half our cost, they have better health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Ours is the only one that lets for-profit insurance companies do it.

Over the past two decades we did away with our last nonprofit insurers, and costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. Obamacare was unsuccessful at reining in this unsustainable rise in costs. But it’s not the cause, as some suggest.

Administrative overhead is 30 percent of total medical care costs for those with private insurance. It is only 5 percent for those with Medicare. And most people who have traditional Medicare like it. They get to choose their provider and have stable, reasonable copays and deductibles.

Insuring every U.S. citizen with Medicare would save more than $500 billion per year. It would eliminate wasteful bureaucracy — something business is usually credited with doing — by shifting back from the business model to the government model. Medicare is 50 years of proof that it will.

We could also save money by negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. This would replace the expensive Medicare Part D and eliminate the drug price gouging currently going on. Insuring everyone lowers overall costs (it is very expensive to treat people who delay health care until they become seriously ill), and we would no longer have to worry about neighbors or relatives unable to afford needed health care.

Bob Lodato, M.D.
Dexter Internal Medicine
Dexter