To the Editor:
I was disappointed to read your coverage of the recent town hall meeting with U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, which I unfortunately did not have the chance to attend.
It seems that there remains a lot of fear and misunderstanding about the proposed inclusion of a public option in the health care reform legislation.
Before rising to judgment, it is perhaps worth reviewing a few facts regarding health insurance in America:
The federal government is already the largest single health- care insurer in the United States. Nearly all adults over the age of 65 are covered by Medicare, while more than 19 percent of the population under age 65 have public health care coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP or another state or federal government-sponsored plan. (Around 66 percent of those under 65 have private health insurance, leaving about 15 percent of the under 65 population with no health coverage.)
Individuals enrolled in Medicare report higher satisfaction with their medical care than those with private insurance.
For instance, problems with both billing and access to care occurred more than twice as often for individuals with employer-based coverage versus those with Medicare, according to a 2007 Commonwealth Fund randomized survey.
Medicare is a more cost-efficient program than those offered by private insurance companies. Administrative costs are around 3 percent, compared with private health insurance for which published administrative costs range from 10 percent to 30 percent.
On a per beneficiary basis, Medicare administrative costs are nearly 40 percent lower than private sector costs. Administrative expenses of private insurers include the high-dollar salaries of CEOs and board members, dividends for stockholders, payments for lobbyists, and other expenses not incurred by publicly run programs.
Of industrialized nations, the United States spends the most in the world on health care, roughly $7,000 per person each year. This is more than double the amount spent in France and the United Kingdom, and more than five times the amount spent in Singapore. Yet all these countries have higher life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates than the United States.
The World Health Organization last ranked the U.S. health care system as 37th in the world. (France was No. 1, Singapore No. 6, and the United Kingdom No. 18) This data suggests that we are not “getting our money's worth” for our current health care dollars.
Having a large percentage of uninsured individuals in our society adds substantially to our present health-care costs.
Since emergency rooms cannot turn away patients, the uninsured often seek medical treatment there, because they have nowhere else to turn, and/or a lack of preventative care or delay in receiving care has led to a more serious medical condition. Emergency room care is expensive, and those unrecovered costs get absorbed through increased fees to those who pay. Such preventable emergency room visits add to the spiraling costs of U.S. health care.
Contrary to what some fear, adoption of a nationalized health care program would not transform the United States into a socialist country.
In fact, all other industrialized countries already have universal health-care systems, yet we hardly consider them socialist.
In the United States today, most of our basic services are provided or administered by federal, state or local governments: fire and police protection, postal service, education, water and sewer service, trash removal, etc. Medical care is just as fundamental as these services and should similarly be available to the whole population.
In a nation as rich and powerful as the United States, no one should have to live without basic medical care. Aside from its justification on moral grounds (though this should be enough), there are strong arguments to be made from the standpoint of cost and wellness. Providing universal health coverage would allow a critical shift in emphasis in our health care system toward prevention, through regular medical checkups, vaccinations and diagnostic testing, all unavailable to the uninsured and underinsured among us now. As 80 percent of illness is preventable; such a shift in focus is bound to lead to substantial savings after an initial period of investment.
The proof rests with those other industrialized countries that made the investment years ago and are now reaping their rewards in better and cheaper medical care than we have here in the United States.
Anne M. Mayes
Mustang