Issue Position: Statement on Health Care
Issue Position
Issue Position: Statement on Health Care
Phil Steck is a strong supporter of universal single-payer health insurance, also known as Medicare for All. As an Albany County Legislator, he got the Legislature to pass a resolution in support of single-payer health insurance. .
Single-payer operates similarly to Social Security, the most popular government program in American history. In the Social Security program, the government raises revenue to pay a monthly pension benefit to all Americans. In a single-payer health insurance program, the government raises revenue to pay medical bills. The government plays no role in health care decisions, which continue to be made by patients and their doctors. Under single-payer health insurance, Americans would receive, according to the chief sponsor of the bill currently pending in Congress, "all medically necessary primary care, dental, mental health, prescription drugs, and long term care services by the physician of their choice, with no restrictions on what providers they could visit."
Medicare is a single-payer health insurance program for elderly Americans. Medicare, an initiative of the Kennedy administration, is an extremely successful program. However, recent Bush administration changes in Medicare, designed to begin privatizing it, have made the program unnecessarily complicated and have reduced benefits to senior citizens. Phil Steck will vote to reverse these changes and restore Medicare to its original condition.
Phil came to support single-payer health insurance during his service as an Albany County Legislator. He learned that 90% of Albany County's property tax revenue is used to pay for the costly Medicaid program, the health insurance system for lower-income Americans. Medicaid is so costly because government has to police Medicaid recipients to make sure they are truly qualified for benefits and police physicians, who are paid extremely little by Medicaid, to make sure they do not inflate their billings to the system.
Albany County has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by becoming a self-insurer for health benefits for its employees. In the County program, employee health insurance premiums are used solely to provide benefits to employees and are not used to pay for an expensive health insurance bureaucracy.
Albany County's experience as a self-insurer demonstrates why single-payer health insurance saves money. In comparison to both Medicaid and private health insurance, Medicare is the most efficient health insurance program available. Medicare spends 3 cents of every dollar on administration and 97 cents on health care. HMOs spend 40 cents of the dollar on administration and only 60 cents on health care.
The Bush Administration, which is captive to private health insurance interests, showed its true colors when it proposed a 10.6 % cut in doctors' reimbursement rates for treating Medicare patients. Fortunately, the Democratic Congress rejected the Bush proposal. Given the tremendous efficiencies realized by Medicare and other single-payer programs, physicians should embrace the adoption of single-payer health insurance. As Congress recently demonstrated, there is no reason not to maintain and even improve physician reimbursement rates in a single-payer program.
Billions of dollars will be saved by adopting a single-payer health insurance program. The savings include the following:
1. Replacement of the extremely costly Medicaid program and its adverse effect on property taxes.
2. Elimination of the costly medical insurance component of Workers' Compensation.
3. Elimination of the costly medical insurance component of auto insurance.
4. Reduction of costs to businesses which pay extremely high health insurance costs.
5. Making American business more competitive internationally, since firms in other nations that have single-payer or other national health insurance programs do not have to factor health insurance costs into the prices of their products, in contrast to American companies which have to absorb those costs or pass them along to their customers.
6. Employees will no longer be forced to pay a percentage of health insurance premiums.
7. Doctors will no longer have to waste time and money complying with health insurance bureaucracies, which often try to increase profits by denying benefits and micromanaging physicians' medical decisions.
8. End the impoverishment of senior citizens who are forced to give up all their assets to pay for nursing home care.
Single-payer health insurance is not some pie-in-the-sky program. A recent study found that 59% of physicians favor a single-payer system. Furthermore, Jim Barba, CEO of Albany Medical Center, recently wrote an opinion piece in the Capital District Business Review in support of single-payer.
Single-payer health insurance is the only reform yet proposed that will:
Cut health insurance costs
Provide coverage to all Americans
Other health insurance programs designed to obtain universal coverage are defective because they obtain universal coverage at the price of higher taxes on the middle class. Single-payer health insurance is the only program that will both save tax dollars and provide solid health care benefits to the middle class. It is a middle class tax cut.
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