Why Single-Payer is the ONLY Sensible Health Care Reform (Explained in Plain English) »

Health care services are in a special category of “services”. Unlike almost all other services in our “free market” economy, most health care services (just like police and fire services) are necessary for all residents—often a matter of life and death. Incredibly, we treat most health care services as if they were optional for some residents. The extreme costs, the multiple inefficiencies, and the shameful injustice of our current health care system are the guaranteed results of treating heath care services as optional for some residents. As a civilized nation, we would never tolerate a system where police or fire services were treated as optional for some residents. To understand how utterly absurd our private health care system is, imagine life in America if we treated police and fire services the way we now treat most health care services....... Insurance companies would have great profit incentives to find myriad ways to deny services or to shift costs because any money spent providing actual services comes right out of their profits. Like our current health care system, this would guarantee millions of residents would have no police or fire services at all..... It’s clearly counterproductive to put a middleman between providers of necessary services and those who need these services. This guarantees disastrous results.

.... providing health care services using a middleman is an unambiguous con game. A health care middleman clearly has profit incentives to charge excessive prices precisely because these services are necessary (pay or die). But even worse, a health care middleman has great profit incentives to deny us necessary services because every health care service denied is pure profit (this is simply smart business).

In addition to diverting billions of our health care dollars to profits and other non-health-care expenses, encouraging excessive premiums, and making it very profitable to deny us necessary services, using a middleman also adds hundreds of billions to our health care costs by forcing hospitals and doctors to maintain vast armies of administrators who must battle hundreds of insurance companies (with thousands of different medical plans) all with great profit incentives to deny us as many health care services as they can get away with (this is simply smart business).

It’s beyond foolish to expect insurance companies to act against their profit incentives. A single-payer system is the only reform that can end this devastating rip-off of the American people.

Preserving profits with lies, damn lies, and propaganda

Insurance companies know very well they’re running an extremely profitable con game. They won’t give up their massive profits without a ruthless political fight.

They tell us “government insurance” would mean rationing, bureaucrats getting between us and our doctors, and excessive costs to taxpayers. In fact, these things are much worse now in our private system. Insurance companies don’t really want us to carefully compare their products with single-payer Medicare, which is rated very highly by its 45 million users.

In a national Commonwealth Fund survey, Medicare users were significantly more satisfied with their health care than people using employer-sponsored plans (even though the elderly require by far the most intensive health care services among us). For example, 70% of those with single-payer Medicare said they “always” get access to needed care (specialists, tests, treatment) compared to only 51% of those with private insurance..... Doctors consistently report having few problems with single-payer Medicare, and frequent problems with private insurance companies.....

Why does this blatant con game continue?

Because our government is for sale to the highest bidder. Our government “representatives” thrive on special interest money. They would be severely punished politically (and lose millions) if they were to put the interests of the American people ahead of influential insurance and drug companies.

The health care industry is spending $1.4 million dollars per day to lobby against reform ($126 million in just the first quarter). This is precisely why our “representatives” (Democrats and Republicans) aren’t seriously considering the only sensible way to provide high-quality health care in America—a tried and tested single-payer system.

Our “representatives” are diligently keeping single-payer “off the table” for one reason only: single-payer would easily win in any honest, open debate. Once again our "representatives" are selling us out to special interests.

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