Critics bash universal health care

BY dennis geisinger

The call for universal health care echoes over our national landscape. With presidential debates at high decibel and politicians digging trenches over the introduction of U.S. Rep. John Conyer's (D-Michigan) National Health Insurance Act, hotmail is being delivered for and against a health care system in which each and every citizen would have full access.

And now that Minnesota is poised to deliver a universal health care plan for all of its residents with the broad legislative support of Sen. John Marty's (DFL-Roseville) “Minnesota Health Care Act,” those who oppose the kind of government-administered system proposed in the new legislation will most certainly make every attempt to convince voters that “socialized medicine” has no place in Minnesota.

Horror stories about existing universal care systems— like the one administered by our next-door neighbors, the Canadians— are already multiplying in many channels.

In order to sort out the issues, it may be helpful to look at who is making the arguments and who has the most to gain or lose with the adoption of a single-payer, universal health care system.

First, the raw facts. According to figures compiled in a July 2006 study by the Minnesota Dept. of Health, approximately 383,000 Minnesotans lack health insurance, 234,000 long-term and the remaining 149,000 uninsured for less than a year.

Most are white (70.1 percent), native-born (82.1 percent) and generally in good to excellent health (86.3 percent). The largest sectors are aged 35-54 (28.0 percent), high school graduates with some college or tech school (68.4 percent) and poor to middle-class (57.8 percent).

“A significant percentage of the uninsured in Minnesota are eligible for public insurance programs but not enrolled - for example, an estimated 59 percent of uninsured Minnesotans are potentially eligible Most are white (70.1 percent), native-born (82.1 percent) and generally in good to excellent health (86.3 percent). The largest sectors are aged 35-54 (28.0 percent), high school graduates with some college or tech school (68.4 percent) and poor to middle-class (57.8 percent).

“A significant percentage of the uninsured in Minnesota are eligible for public insurance programs but not enrolled – for example, an estimated 59 percent of uninsured Minnesotans are potentially eligible for public programs (based on their income) but are not enrolled,” according to the study.

If these people would use the existing MinnesotaCare program for coverage, the health dept. estimates the cost at $663 million.

It is important to point out that this cost would not be above and beyond what are already costs to the health care system; the uninsured receive health care services today, and those services are paid for in a variety of ways. More than $250 million per year is currently spent on uncompensated care at hospitals and clinics in Minnesota, most of these costs stemming from people who lack health insurance.

A 1995 summary by the state office of the legislative auditor revealed that the administrative costs of incurred by private and public insurers, physicians, hospitals, employers, and government regulatory agencies amounted to around 15 percent of overall health spending for the previous year.

“Our study for Minnesota estimated that overall spending under a Canadian-style system would increase by 0.4 percent as a result of lower administrative costs (6.5 percent) and higher utilization costs (6.9 percent),” according to the legislative auditor.

And according to the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition (MUHCC), “The difference between current public funding and what we would need for a universal health care system, would be financed by a payroll tax on employers (about 7 percent) and an income tax on individuals (about 2 percent).”

“For the vast majority of people a 2 percent income tax is less than what they now pay for insurance premiums and in out-of-pocket payments such as co-pays and deductibles, particularly for anyone who has had a serious illness or has a family member with a serious illness,” says the MUHCC.

Speaking of money, it seems to be much less of a concern to those who actively work to scuttle public measures to provide universal health care for their constituents. An Associated Press story appearing in 2001 told of campaign finance reports filed with the city of Portland, Maine showing that opponents of a nonbinding resolution on a ballot calling for the city to encourage government-run universal health care raised more than $382,000 to defeat it. Supporters collected less than $1,500 during the same period.

That level of spending is unusual in a place where $500,000 is enough to mount a serious congressional campaign, according to local political watchers.
“It’s one little city voting on an advisory referendum,” said Oliver Woshinsky, a political science professor at the University of Southern Maine in the story. “This just shows you what's at stake here,” he said.

An ABC News story on Aug.22 told of the birth ten days earlier of identical quadruplets Great Falls, Mont. The parents, Karen and J.P. Jepp live in Calgary, Canada, but were sent to the states after learning that every single neonatal unit in Canada was too crowded to handle four premature births.

A spokeswoman with the Calgary Health Region said no Canadian natal intensive care unit had space for Jepp's four babies. Critics of Canadian health care soon responded with blog and email postings decrying the event as evidence of a failed system. But the ABC report noted that the lack of space was the result of a pair of unusual circumstances.

According to ABC, “Calgary doctors had been closely monitoring Jepp's pregnancy and were anticipating her newborns would require care at Foothills Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit in Calgary. However, when Jepp began experiencing labor symptoms on Friday, the unit at Foothills was over capacity with several unexpected pre-term births.”

As another Canadian blogger pointed out, “If American hospitals were helping everyone with coverage, their hospitals would be full too…which would partly explain why they have room in their hospitals.”

Canadian “Sally Pipes…was unlucky enough to appear, briefly, in Michael Moore's new movie, ‘Sicko’,” wrote Amy Ridenour in her July 31 blog. She quotes Pipes’ op-ed in the Providence (RI) Journal: “...Government-run health care in Canada inevitably devolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health-care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago -- she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest-quality care in the government's eyes -- I can honestly say that Moore's preferred health-care system is something I wouldn't wish on him.”

Sally Pipes is the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and Amy Ridenour is president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Ridenour is an associate of Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist currently serving a five-sentence federal sentence for fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion, and before he was imprisoned she supported his clients and attacked his rivals in op-ed pieces in national newspapers.

Pipes and Ridenour both advocate for the tobacco industry and against environmental issues like research into global warming.

Another Canadian who rails against his native country's health care system is Dr. David Gratzner. Gratzner writes articles like “Canada: A Health Care System on the Edge” for the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) and the Fraser Institute. In 1999, the Fraser Institute raised the ire of scientists and health professionals when it sponsored two conferences on the tobacco industry. They were titled “Junk Science, Junk Policy? Managing Risk and Regulation” and “Should government butt out? The pros and cons of tobacco regulation.”