Making the Case for a National Health Care & Health Insurance System

While NHI would require new taxes, these would be fully offset by decreased insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The additional tax burden would be smaller than is usually appreciated, since almost 60% of U. S. health care spending is already tax supported (vs. roughly 70% in Canada). In addition to direct payments for Medicare, Medicaid, and coverage of military and other government employees, we provide tax breaks worth over $200 billion annually to private insurance.

International experience proves that universal coverage is feasible and improves health. Every other developed nation assures health coverage for the entire population. Our infant mortality rate, among the lowest in the world in 1950, is now disturbingly high. We trail other nations on life expectancy and score poorly on measures of premature death.

Surveys have consistently shown wide popular support for national health insurance. Many physicians, including most medical school faculty and deans, now favor a single payer reform. Yet the policy debate is dominated by options that protect insurers and the drug industry rather than the health and wealth of the American people.

National health insurance could solve the cost-vs.-access conflict by slashing bureaucracy -- now nearly 30% of our health care budget. It would reorient the way we pay for care and eliminate financial barriers to access. NHI could restore the physician-patient relationship, offer patients a free choice of physicians and hospitals, and free physicians from the bonds of managed care. How many more patchwork reforms must fail? How many more patients must be turned away? How many more trillions of dollars must be squandered on malignant bureaucracy before we adopt the only viable solution -- a national health insurance system?

Like people in other nations, Americans want a system that assures care when we need it at an affordable price, that engenders trust and respect, and that affords patients choice. A universal, tax-funded, non-profit national health program organized like Canada's (but better funded) could achieve these goals. We need the liberal benefits and conservative spending that national health insurance would allow.