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Hospital CEO for Single-Payer Reforms

Posted by Shum Preston on September 5, 2008 - 12:28pm

You would think that hospitals would be leading the drive for HR 676 and single-payer, European-style reforms, wouldn't you?  I mean doctors have finally flipped to support getting rid of the health insurance companies...shouldn't hospitals be next?  They're the ones who have to create an entire bureaucracy to fight with the insurers.

Well...good news....they are.  This piece from James Barba, CEO of a hospital in New York State, is a significant development, and one that I suspect we'll be hearing more like:  



Against this significant concession, the issue of a single payer versus a multiplicity of payers is an easier matter, and I think that we can resolve it rather quickly. There appears to be no debate whatever that our current means of delivering health care has become cripplingly expensive. To devote more than 16 percent (and climbing) of our gross domestic product to a single service, no matter how important, is not sustainable. Once we decide that we will have universal coverage, the only approach that will allow actual and substantial savings is a single payer. There are many reasons for this...A single information system would allow all providers to manage and supply data to the payer. The current system, whereby each payer requires health care providers to spend significant resources on billing information systems in order to get their bills paid, is extraordinarily expensive and wasteful....A study done five years ago, indicates that if the nation were to move to a single-payer system, the cost savings would be in the $200 to $300 billion dollar range. From that savings, the highest estimate I have seen for giving adequate health insurance coverage to all uninsured Americans is $125 billion.

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National Health Insurance Single-Payer-Not; Palin's Reform-Not

Submitted by Terry B. Brauer on September 6, 2008 - 3:40pm.

All healthcare providers want their patients well-insured.

They do not want a single-payer or Medicare-for-all payment system because the reimbursement rates are significantly less than those of private sector insurance plans. Insurance companies have underwritten their survival by being the most generous healthcare payers. When push comes to shove, most providers will dance with those who promise to make the buffet the most abundant.

The solutions are too extensive to go into here, but would require a real paradigm shift in public policy.

Meanwhile, this is Sarah Palin's notion of healthcare reform --- the unbridled proliferation of healthcare services.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/05/politics/washingtonpost/main44...

In part, that's why healthcare consumes as much of our GNP. True market competition in healthcare is impossible without greater consumer education, participation, honest and aggressive oversight, and accountability. As long as there are policy-makers willing to encourage excess capacity and the inherent over-utilization attendant to it, there will be millions of unnecessary diagnostic images, lab tests, surgeries, etc.

Healthcare Economics 101: Supply drives demand.

Palin would end the minimal control Certificate-of-Need over the excess utilization of services. MRIs, CT Scans, and other expensive, profitable out-patient services would be popping up on every corner in America. Patients are in no position to argue 'medical judgment' with a physician or other provider, who happen to realize additional income from undisclosed self-referrals.

If McCain-Palin prevail, healthcare consumers will be praying for a return to the good 'ole days when healthcare costs were affordable for relatively few. We will move from 28% with medical debt to 78% with medical debt within their first term.

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