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Voices of the Northwest
Why I Support Measure 23, the Oregon Health Care Ballot Measure
Health Care Insurance Reform is Possible Now
By Dr. Roberta Palmer, M.D.
Posted on Sep 30, 2002 |
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"How can we afford a new health care system when we are facing such a huge deficit in the state budget?" This a common reaction to Measure 23, the Oregon Comprehensive Health Care Financing Act that voters will be asked to consider in the upcoming general election.
How can we afford not to reform health care at this unique opportunity? We are bled by a decrepit system that is overloaded with middle men and bureaucratic paper shuffling. The service of health care has become the business of health care, and as such, it is failing to deliver health care that is secure, affordable, and universal.
While insurance companies deliver not so much as a Band-Aid of reform in health care, the insurance industry's administrative expenditures alone would go a long way in covering the uninsured in Oregon. A special fund established by Measure 23 can be administered for the health care of all Oregon residents at a fraction of what the insurance companies currently spend in overhead. How? By eliminating CEO salaries, advertising, sales bonuses, profits, and the reams of insurance forms that providers must submit at their own expense. Merely applying more of the health care dollar toward actual health care is a big step in the right direction.
"Why should I have to pay for someone else's health care?" you ask. We already pay for the uninsured. Our insurance premiums rise when the uninsured obtain expensive treatment in an emergency room. We pay when the preventive care or the yearly check-up that was denied them results in a problem that was not detected in the early stages. Instead, we pay for a serious illness costing tens of thousands of dollars, or, even worse, a chronically disabling condition. Measure 23 eliminates "cost shifting" from the uninsured and the underinsured.
Measure 23 promises to control the runaway inflation we have been experiencing in health care premiums. In addition to cost shifting, the primary cause of inflation is the soaring cost of prescription drugs. Measure 23 will negotiate large purchases of pharmaceuticals as a means of controlling prescription drug costs. The resulting inflation control will benefit not only employees but businesses that presently provide health care benefits. The OHSU nurses struck in 2001 at least in part because of the soaring cost of health care premiums that kept their wages from rising. Businesses will benefit from health care inflation control because they will not be forced to drop or reduce coverage and thereby risk losing valuable employees. In addition, contentious negotiations with unions over health care benefits would become obsolete in Oregon.
"Quality always suffers under socialized medicine," you counter. "Socialized medicine" generally implies state ownership of health care facilities and employment of practitioners so treatments are rationed and waiting lists are long. Measure 23 maintains practitioners in the private sector, offering the patient full choice of any licensed physician, dentist, or alternative provider. But even the United Kingdom, which does have "socialized medicine", is ranked eighteenth in quality by the World Health Organization, whereas the U.S. ranks only thirty-seventh! While the British system is underfunded at present, it achieved a high ranking spending less than half what we spend per person ( 5.8% GDP vs. 13.7% GDP in the U.S.). The much-maligned Canadian system is also about half as costly as ours, yet has achieved a rank of thirtieth in quality. It should be a source of great embarrassment that Americans are forced to go to Canada and to Mexico for affordable prescription drugs.
Since Measure 23 establishes a separate fund, it will not threaten school funding. On the contrary, it will prove a boon to schools. A study completed in Jan. 2002 of the health insurance expenditures of eight Oregon school districts determined that had Measure 23 been in place, those districts combined would have saved over eight million dollars in one year.
A statement in the Voters' Pamphlet explains that Measure 23 has "no financial effect on local government revenues" because it contains its own method of financing. Since the financing of Measure 23 is based upon the ability to pay (see www.hcao.org), it is affordable. The General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office have both determined that a single-payer health care system such as that offered in Measure 23 is the most efficient and cost-effective method of health care delivery that preserves the choice of an independent practitioner. We can afford a new health care system. We cannot afford the status quo.
Visit Health Care for All Oregon for more details.
Roberta Palmer, M.D. is a volunteer for the "Yes on 23 Campaign." ***
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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