HHS secretary nominee (and, perhaps more critically, head of Obama's new White House Office of Health Reform) Tom Daschle is putatively an expert on healthcare issues. Why? He wrote a book! "Critical" is not a big hit with readers, apparently, especially those who are a bit more well-informed. OK, I haven't read the whole thing (I've read plenty of others concerning this issue), but I have an acquaintance who has and is not very impressed with the breadth of his discourse, in particular, the short shrift given to single-payer as an effective solution to the financing of healthcare.
Let's see what our HHS nominee had to say on this critical issue, shall we?
From Daschle's book, here is everything he has to say about the important issue of single-payer healthcare financing:
The key question for any health-care reform plan is ‘How will it cover people?’ Most of the world’s highest ranking healthcare systems employ some kind of a ’single payer’ strategy...that is, the government, directly or through insurer’s, is responsible for paying doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers. Supporters say single payer is brilliantly simple, ensures equity by providing all people with the same benefits, and saves billions of dollars by creating economies of scale and streamlining administration. But a pure single payer system is problematic in the United States, at least right now. Even though polls show that seniors are happier with Medicare than younger people are with their private insurance, opponents of reform have demonized government run systems as ’socialized medicine’. The healthcare industry fears that government-set reimbursement will limit its ability to provide care and deaden incentives to develop new drugs and cures. Furthermore, many people who have insurance now are satisfied with it, and are wary of change.
If passage of a single payer system isn’t realistic, what should we do?"
This is the only paragraph he devotes to single-payer in the whole book!
Let's dissect this a bit. First, he (kind of) admits that single-payer is brilliantly simple and saves billions of dollars (that's not him speaking, mind you, it's those pesky single-payer supporters).
But this system is problematic. Why? Let's see, the people that are actually in a single-payer system here in the US like it, but "opponents" demonize it!
Oh dear,this is a problem! What are we ever to do? I'm at a complete loss.
He then goes on to some unsupported claims about drug manufacturers (Switzerland switched to singe-payer* in the mid-nineties and still has a thriving pharmaceutical industry) and completely ridiculous claim about how people are satisfied with their current insurance - certainly a vanishingly small sample of our citizenry at best.
So I guess there's nothing to do. Certainly there is no counter to the demonizers' arguments about government-run healthcare. OK, I'm being excessively snarky, but I think the point is he isn't even trying, which is telling. If we have a guy in charge who is apparently unwilling to even consider one of the best solutions for the financing of healthcare, we should probably ask ourselves "What else is he missing?"
This does not bode well for the reform we need...
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* Switzerland is actually an "all-payer" system, point being that providers are paid a set reimbursement by all insurers - Switzerland recently rejected going to single-payer in an effort to reduce their helathcare costs (which are still significantly less than ours). Switzerland represents a partially successful system of highly regulated insurers (regulation that would be
completely unacceptable to US style insurers)