Single Payer Is Cheaper and Works Better (5/9/17)

RE: Sacramento Bee's editorial: In single-payer health coverage, consider how much taxes would increase, by Jim Wunderman 5/7/17


© by Mark Dempsey

Former financial sector executive Jim Wunderman's May 17 Sacramento Bee editorial about single-payer healthcare proposed for California in SB562 warns: "consider how much taxes would increase," but says nothing about how much health insurance premiums would decrease.

One would think someone previously employed in the financial sector could both add and subtract...but no.

Wunderman says: "The practical reality is that setting up a single-payer system, especially for just one state, is unworkable." So...although Denmark has a smaller population than California, its current single-payer health care is "unworkable"? And the fact that a single Canadian province (Saskatchewan) with one thirtieth California’s population adopted single-payer before it became Canada's national Medicare system was "unworkable"?

Like Wunderman's "non-partisan" Bay Area Council, other subtraction-impaired finance/insurance-friendly business groups--the Chamber of Commerce was one--also testified in the state Senate committee hearings against SB562, saying previous studies of single-payer healthcare demonstrate California's health expenses would rise if the state adopted such a system. Even Jerry Brown, who previously campaigned for the presidency advocating single-payer, now worries about where California will get the money.

But Wunderman's conclusion that single-payer would cost more contradicts other countries' experience where per-patient costs are roughly half as much as our current system. Why is California projected to be so much more expensive than other countries, and what is it about "half as expensive" that we can't afford? [Crickets]

A previous study cited by the single-payer opponents in that Senate hearing actually concludes: "We estimate an increase in health services utilization of about $17.1 billion as comprehensive health insurance coverage is extended to all Californians. This would be more than offset by savings of $25.0 billion due to administrative simplification and bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and medical equipment." (from The Health Care For All Californians Act... by the Lewin Group, 2005)

So we can't afford to pay $8 billion less than we are already paying?

The Bee itself published an account of single payer health care noting experience, not studies or educated guesses about future impacts, shows single-payer is not only much cheaper, it also produces better healthcare outcomes--like increased life expectancy--than the U.S. system. The World Health Organization’s study conducted in 2000 ranked the U.S. 37th in the world in health care outcomes, between Slovenia and Costa Rica. The Bee's account concluded that it's as though we have the health care of Costa Rica but pay six times more for the privilege.

One doesn't need a weatherman to discredit Wunderman's assessment of which way the wind blows. Like representatives of most insurance/finance-friendly business organizations, he's willing to distort any fact to fit his conclusion that we must continue to pay insurance company's much-larger overhead and C-suite salaries, and that we must submit to a business model that encourages denying coverage rather than treating patients. Wunderman’s conclusions simply demonstrate how financial sector bias trumps common sense.

Contrary to the Chamber of Commerce’s contention, experience also says single-payer would be the opposite of a “job killer.” In 2005 Toyota built a factory in Canada rather than Michigan because the health care was so much cheaper. Champion stock-picker Warren Buffett has called rising healthcare costs “a tapeworm,” eating away at American business. His partner, Charlie Munger said U.S. manufacturers have a “huge competitive disadvantage caused by the health system” over their single-payer competitors.

At the beginning of the Great Recession, the financial (insurance) sector literally received trillions in bailout money. Let’s stop subsidizing them with our poorer, more expensive health care too.


--Mark Dempsey enjoys single-payer Medicare now, and has never been a public sector employee.