Health care op eds in the Star

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by David Safier
The drum beat for strong health care legislation continues as the defenders of the indefensible status quo continue to fight to put off needed change for another day decade.

The Star has two op eds this morning, from people I'm pleased to say, who spoke in my living room Sunday to a group of mainly Democrats and a few Independents.

One is from State Rep. Phil Lopes who argues strongly for a single payer system.

Empirical evidence clearly shows that the one proposal that will restrain the rate [of growth in health care costs] is single-payer. Those who fear that single-payer is new and foreign, and therefore untested, need to be reminded that Medicare is, in essence, a single-payer system. For those who are eligible, Medicare is universal and identical, not means-tested and is administered by the government, which acts as a single-payer through contracts with the private sector to provide hospital and outpatient physician services.

At very least, Lopes writes, we must have a public option which is single payer.

The other is Dr. Raymond Graap, also an advocate for a single payer plan.

In our five-physician office, we deal with 70 insurance plans, from the largest to the smallest. These plans subdivide into 334 different arrangements with Tucson community employers. Each arrangement has a different set of benefits: deductibles, co-pays, and limits of coverage all differ based on what the employer has negotiated with the plan.

He estimates 15-30% administration costs across the system because of all the demands of working with so many insurers and plans, each of which has to be dealt with separately.

Even with its problems, Medicare has an operational overhead of only 3 percent, and the problems are fixable. This approach is the most conservative, fiscally responsible way to fund health care without creating another whole bureaucracy.

Add to that an editorial from the Tucson Citizen (which is still alive and kicking as a blog-oriented news outlet) on the same page in the Star which states that Obama's health care plan is too weak, fiddling around the edges of the problem. According to the writer, the Republican cry that Obama is trying to create socialized medicine is "horse puckey."

Would that it were only Republicans who were trying to gut a far-too-moderate-already health care plan. Read Krugman's column quoted in AZ Blue Meanie's post below. Be sure you read far enough learn about Billie Tauzin, one of the founders of the Blue Dogs. The remaining Blue Dogs should be running away from his legacy with their tails between their legs instead of embracing it.

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