NU Online News Service, Feb.24, 2:48 p.m. EST
A doctors' group that complains it has been shut out of President Obama's health care summit tomorrow said the president's proposals won't provide the health reform the country needs.
The criticism came from Physicians for a National Health Program, which supports a single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach for health care reform.
Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of the group, said the White House proposal, preserving a central role for the for-profit, private health insurance industry, is incapable of achieving the kind of universal, comprehensive and affordable reform the country needs.
"Regrettably, the president's proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill. For example, the president's proposal would ship hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies," said Dr. Young.
"And to help finance this, it would impose a new tax on health benefits of workers, especially those in high-cost states," he added.
The individual mandate in the proposal, said Dr. Young, "would force millions of middle-income uninsured Americans to buy insurers' skimpy products–insurance policies full of gaps like ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums. Such policies already leave middle-class American families vulnerable to economic hardship and medical bankruptcy in the event of a serious illness like cancer."
His statement mentioned an August article in the American Journal of Medicine reporting a study that found medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007, based on data collected prior to the economic downturn.
Dr. Young said under the president's proposal at least 23 million people would remain uninsured. And "we know that being uninsured raises your chance of dying by about 40 percent," he continued, citing a recent Harvard physicians study estimating that nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance.
"That translates into about 23,000 unnecessary deaths each year. As physicians, we find this completely unacceptable," he remarked.
"In short," Dr. Young said, "this proposal is an insurance company bonanza, not good, evidence-based health reform. The president would do better by abandoning the insurance and drug companies and instead taking up the single-payer approach."
His group estimates that such an approach could save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by simplifying health administration.
"By building on and improving the already popular Medicare program, we could put our patients' interests first," he said. "Were President Obama to do so, he would meet with strong public support, including from the medical community," said Dr. Young.
He mentioned that his organization had requested an invitation to the health care summit at Blair House but had not received a reply from the White House.
Requests by Reps. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., that single-payer advocates be included in the meeting "have apparently gone unanswered," Dr. Young said.
He noted that the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, supporting a "Medicare for all" health care system, will hold its own sidewalk summit on health reform with speakers outside the White House tomorrow.
The Leadership Conference said its "people's summit will feature diverse speakers representing doctors, nurses, patients, labor, faith-based groups and community political advocacy groups who continue to press the president and Congress to act responsibly and ethically to address the nation's health care crisis by extending an improved Medicare for all model."
Dr. Young's organization claims it has 17,000 doctors who support its concept for health reform.
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