Reply #7: Single payer: bold, affordable, humane - Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H.

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http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/june/single_payer_bold_.php

"The following is the testimony of Dr. Walter Tsou to the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions on June 10. The hearing was titled “Examining the single-payer health care option.”


"Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility. It is clear that cost controls mean that someone’s ox gets gored, either the taxpayers’, physicians’ and hospitals’, or the private health insurance industry’s. When some Congressional leaders declare that “single payer is off the table,” they are, in effect, saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers.

Let’s examine each of these categories:

For the taxpayers, it is difficult to understand why we must endure an additional $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade in expenses at a time when our nation already spends 50 percent more per capita on health care than any other country in the world.

For physicians and hospitals, simply cutting reimbursements is counterproductive, especially at a time when we need to increase reimbursements for primary care and mental health services.


...President Obama has stated that if he were to start over again he would favor a single-payer system, but argues that moving to single payer is too radical.

Well, I come from Philadelphia where revolutionary ideas are celebrated not dismissed. Our most famous radical document begins with the words, “We the People,” not “We the Insurers.” “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . . . to promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” This nation captured the world’s imagination with bold ideas that put the people first. It is time for our own generation’s revolution."