U.S. Should Implement Government-Sponsored, Single-Payer System, Opinion Piece States

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 30 Mar 2006 - 20:00 PDT

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"The answer to our health care dilemmas is single-payer, government-sponsored universal health insurance," or Medicare for all age groups, Alex Gerber, a clinical professor of surgery emeritus at University of Southern California, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece. Gerber, a former health care consultant to the White House and HHS, writes that none of the health care plans proposed by the Bush administration would end "our anachronistic employer-based, multipayer private health insurance system," in which one-fourth of "current total health care costs are eaten up by the insurance industry's overhead expenses." In contrast, Medicare has overhead expenses of less than 5%, Gerber writes. He adds that Canada -- which has a government-sponsored, single-payer health care system -- "spends one-tenth as much as U.S. insurance providers spend for overhead" and "functions at almost one-half the cost of ours yet boasts lower infant and maternal mortality and longer life expectancy." According to Gerber, "There is not the slightest chance the Bush administration will consider changing to the Canadian health care system," and "the best we can hope for is a wait of a few years when perhaps there will be a wholesale change in Washington" (Gerber, Washington Times, 3/26).

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