Medicare for all?

Two recent articles worth noting have asked the question above, and both have answered it “yes.” The writers are Saul Friedman, columnist for Newsday, and Dr. Oliver Fein, associate dean and professor of clinical medicine and public health at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and president of Physicians for a National Health Program. Both men see expansion of the Medicare program as a viable solution to the nation’s health care ills. And they are not alone. Congress has before it a proposal for "Medicare for All" (HR676), introduced in February 2007 by Rep. John Conyers Jr., (D-Mich.). The bill is said to have (including Rep. Conyers) “94 co-sponsors…it also has the endorsement of most labor unions, thousands of doctors, nurses and health care professionals.” The Conyers proposal, also backed by the Physicians for a National Plan, would gradually provide Medicare for everyone who wants it and would pay a premium.


The plan seems to have received little mention in the media. According to Friedman, “It would absorb such programs as Medicaid, SCHIP and be paid for by taxes and premiums. It could relieve auto manufacturers and other businesses of paying for health insurance for employees and retirees. Its sponsors say it would save $300 billion a year in administrative costs, for it would deny insurance companies a role.”

And that may be the rub. Friedman states “Getting over that hurdle may be why HR 676 has gotten so little publicity, even from alleged friends of older people. There is no mention of it on the Web site of AARP, which earns $700 million a year in royalties on the sale of private health insurance it sponsors.” Read full column here.

In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dr. Fein writes:

However well-intentioned, the Obama/Baucus/Kennedy approaches share a fatal flaw: they preserve a central role for the private health insurance industry.

To varying degrees, they would mandate that everyone buy private health insurance— the private insurance that is failing us today. Some of these plans offer a Medicare-like, public option that people could buy into, but experience with Medicare shows that the private plans refuse to compete on a level playing field. They cherry-pick healthier patients and insist on more than their share of payment.

Experience with mandate-based plans in Washington state (1993), Oregon (1992) and Massachusetts (1988 and today) shows that they simply don’t work, achieving neither universal health care nor cost containment.

As long as we rely on private health insurers, universal coverage will be unaffordable....
There is a cure, however. Eliminating the private insurance industry would save $400 billion annually in administrative costs, enough to ensure that everyone is covered and to eliminate all co-pays and deductibles.

At this critical juncture, a single-payer plan is the only medically, morally and fiscally responsible path to take. Read full column here.