What is single payer and how does it work? Simply stated just think “Medicare for everyone”. More specifically, as stated in our information/membership form: “Individuals and businesses pay into a single public healthcare fund based on income. Government financing for the poor, disabled and elderly is rolled into the fund. Everyone receives the same card, accepted by all providers, who are paid fairly according to negotiated rates. There is no new spending. The payer is a governor appointed commissioner and a board of about two dozen health care professionals. You can see more details about this board at our website (www.healthcareforall.org). The delivery system of doctors, hospitals, medical equipment providers, would remain the same: privately delivered. For all the specific details you can go to our website (www.healthcareforall.org) and download the entire 80+ page bill.

Why do we think single payer is the answer? Every industrialized democratic country that uses this system, covers all their citizens for about half of what we spend. Our insurance companies are a for profit corporate structure whose fiduciary responsibility is to their stockholders first and foremost. Profits increase by raising premiums and denying service which runs counterproductive to a health care system whose purpose is to heal the sick. We currently have enough money to cover everyone with quality care, but too much of it goes to things other than actual health care.

ER Dr. Paul Hochfeld, in Eugene OR, made a documentary called Health, Money and Fear in which he shows the great waste in our current system and the perverse incentives that drive it. He believes single payer is the first necessary, but not only, step to creating a universal quality healthcare system in this country.

There’s another factor raised by T.R. Reid, author of Healing of America, that also makes our health care so expensive and it’s something which would be solved by a single payer system. According to Reid, in our country we use many different health care models, from the VA which is run by our government, to Medicare which is publicly funded and privately delivered. We also have an employer based model and the Out of Pocket Model. In every country T.R. Reid investigated who has achieved universal healthcare, while their solutions vary widely, they all use one and only one system for everyone. So when Reid interviewed the health ministers from those countries he asked why do you have one size fits all medicine. They gave three reasons:

1. It’s Simpler if we have one plan and one set of rules. In this country we have thousands of insurance companies each with their multitude of policies, making our paperwork alone cost billions.
2. There’s a greater economic incentives for preventative. When a system has you from cradle to grave, it is in that system’s best interest to keep you healthy. In this country we change insurers on an average of 4.8 years. As far as your insurance company is concerned, once you’re sick you’re usually someone else’s problem so there’s no incentive for them to keep you healthy. And the longer health problems continue to go unchecked, the more costly the ultimate care needed will be. So according to the first two reasons, we can actually save money in a one size fits all, or single payer system.
3. The third reason is because “It’s Fairer” - every country that committed itself to universal health care did so because they addressed it as a moral issue and decided it was the right thing to do. This is about our national ethic. We need to ask ourselves is it the responsibility of a successful society to see that all it’s citizens have equal access to equal health care? We have a moral ethic in this country that if you work hard you can afford and deserve more and better things. That seems reasonable when you’re talking about what car to buy or what house you can afford, but when it comes to health, many of us don’t have a choice of whether or not to be a diabetic or an asthmatic or an elderly person. I think of Martin Luther King when he said: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

What are we up to? We table once a month at Briar Patch, and during the summer we’re at the Nevada City and Grass Valley farmers'  markets to educate the public and increase our membership which has quadrupled since last May. We meet once every third Saturday at Sierra Mt. Coffee Roasters to discuss fundraising, home parties, organizing for rallies and outreach to the community. We make educational videos and keep an active presence in The Union and on KVMR radio. January 10th we organized a caravan to attend the rally for Lobby Day 2011 in support of single payer at the steps of the Capitol. Whereas last year we had 3 people join us, this year we had 21 people accompany us to the Capitol. We’re having a fundraising dinner Jan 21, 2011, at SummerThymes Deli and Bakery.

Our focus is on education because our biggest obstacle we face is the disinformation and scare tactics employed by the insurance industry. That’s why we are very thankful that Wendell Potter, former VP for the giant insurance company Cigna, is now the industry’s whistleblower. In charge of public relations and communication, he was the very person that crafted the popular talking point now commonly used against single payer, “socialized medicine,” in order to divide the country between those of us who believe in healthcare as a right and those who of us who fear government involvement in our healthcare system. By dividing us they prevent us from accomplishing what is in all of our best interest.

How to bridge this great divide is a common topic for us. At the Mad As Hell Doctors event we put on this last October, Dr. Mike Huntington spoke about three talking points he uses to span the divisiveness and to focus on important issues to which we all can relate. These points are: family values, fiscal responsibility and national security.

• Family values: Oncologist Dr. Huntington tells us this story: “So a man in his 50’s who hasn’t been able to afford health insurance for the past few years, goes to emergency because of throat pain he’s had to ignore far too long, and finds he has 4th stage throat cancer. He has a conversation with his wife that night behind closed doors so his kids can’t hear: ‘Honey, I don’t think I can go through with this. I don’t know if it will help, and I don’t want to leave you and the kids destitute.’ I’ve seen this scenario of trampling on family values too many times.”
• Fiscal responsibility - How fiscally responsible is it that we use over 30% of the money paid for health care to go to billing and unnecessary administrative expenses?
• National Security - What does it say about our security when 45,000 people die each year due to lack of health care accessibility? When over 62% of all bankruptcies, that’s 750,000 people going bankrupt annually, are due to medical bills, and 75% of those people had health insurance?

I know I’d sleep better in the comfort of security if I knew I’d never have to choose between bankruptcy or death, if I lived in a society that cared enough about all its citizens to make universal health care a reality. That’s why I belong to HCA and am fighting for single payer health care. Please come join me.

Mindy Oberne
healthcareforall@bagglady.com
Co-chair Nevada Country Chapter of HCA Health Care for All - California healthcareforall.org

Healthcare for All