The health insurance industry is like a vicious sleeping dog.
President Barack Obama, with his health care reform plan, would kick the dog.
Better to eliminate the dog altogether by enacting a single payer plan.
That’s the take of Dr. Johnathon Ross.
Ross is a medical doctor based in Toledo, Ohio.
He also leads Single Payer Action Network Ohio – an advocacy group that is pushing for legislation that would make the Buckeye State the first in the nation to pass single payer into law.
“The insurance industry is a sleeping, but very vicious dog,” Ross told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “You have a decision to make. You can either put a bullet in the back of its head. Or you can kick it. And Obama is going to kick that dog. And that dog is going to wake up and kill his plan.”
“If he just kicks it with Obama regulation, and regulates it in an extreme way – force them to take all comers, regulate their profits, which he has talked about – they are going to fight you tooth and nail. We are better off to just get rid of the industry.”
Ross says that by eliminating the private health insurance companies, you save $300 billion in administrative costs. Currently, administrative costs are 30 percent ($600 billion) of a $2 trillion system.
The $300 billion you save by eliminating the private insurance companies would help you cover the 15 percent of the population that is uninsured – somewhere around 46 million people – and maybe another 10 or 20 million people who are so poorly insured that if they were to lose a job, lose their insurance, or even have a major illness, they would be bankrupted, Ross said.
“We save enough to cover everybody with comprehensive coverage, no out-of-pocket payment, any hospital you want to go to, any doctor you want to go to, any doctor in the country, anywhere in the country. That is what you get for that administrative savings,” Ross said. “We are functionally, probably the best health care system in the world. We have the best hospitals, the best doctors, the best nurses, the best equipment in the world. But we also have one of the most inefficient systems for delivering that health care.”
There is a split in the single payer community. Some want to focus on federal legislation – HR 676. That bill is currently being supported by over 90 Democratic members of the House.
Others, like Ross, believe it is unlikely that single payer legislation will make it out of Washington any time soon. Instead, Ross argues that each of the states should push their own versions of single payer.
“What are the pros of pushing at the state level?” Ross asks. “First, you have fifty chances to get the job done. Fifty different sets of ideas developing. Fifty different looks at how to create a system that will work best for all of us. Whether you are doctor, hospital administrator, patient or bureaucrat, the common ground is this – you will be a patient some day. I would love to have fifty different states to come up with ideas on how to create a single payer that would help to control costs, improve the quality of care and still offer us the best of scientific medicine.”
Ross believes that even if the Democrats get a filibuster proof 60 seat majority the Senate, single payer will still have a tough time passing through Washington.
“Even if we get 60 Democratic Senators in Congress, you will have enough Blue Dogs that you might not be able to cut off debate,” Ross said. “Obama has said – if I were starting over, I would do single payer. So, even if we can get Obama to agree to push for it, if we can get the House to vote for it, and the Senate to vote for it, we still might not have enough votes in the Senate to close debate.”
Ross also argues that a single payer system would deter health care fraud. “The chances you will catch up with somebody who is trying to defraud you is much more likely under a single payer system,” Ross said. “In a system with 1,000 insurers, you could send one bad bill once a year to each one of those insurers, and you probably would never get caught. Odds are greater if you try and steal $10,000 from one single payer system.”
[For a complete transcript of the interview with Johnathon Ross, see 22 Corporate Crime Reporter 46(8), December 1, 2008, print edition only.]
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