National Health Insurance Issue

The Insurance industry is failing the consumer. The concept of fraud is being used by the insurance industry to deceive the public. "Our current national health care system is simple: don't get sick."

National Health Insurance Issue

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Our privatized health care system is failing. As long as profits are paramount to the success of a business-people's lives will be put in jeopardy. Within the the U.S. many people are already under a type of national healthcare system-Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans' benefits. If the system is not insuring a group of people then the laws can be changed without the issue of business profits being the cornerstone of the issue. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, costs are skyrocketing, and the bureaucracy is expanding. Patchwork reforms succeed only in exchanging old problems for new ones. It is time for basic change in American medicine. We propose a national health program that would

(1) fully cover everyone under a single, comprehensive public insurance program;

(2) pay hospitals and nursing homes a total (global) annual amount to cover all operating expenses;

(3) fund capital costs through separate appropriations;

(4) pay for physicians services and ambulatory services in any of three ways: through fee-for-service payments with a simplified fee schedule and mandatory acceptance of the national health program payment as the total payment for a service or procedure (assignment), through global budgets for hospitals and clinics employing salaried physicians, or on a per capital basis (capitation);

(5) be funded, at least initially, from the same sources as at present, but with payments disbursed from a single pool; and

(6) contain costs through savings on billing and bureaucracy, improved health planning, and the ability of the national health program, as the single payer for services to establish overall spending limit

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A Better-Quality Alternative: Single-Payer National Health System Reform

MANY MISCONSTRUE US health system reform options by presuming that "trade-offs" are needed to counter-balance the competing goals of increasing access, containing costs, and preserving quality.^{1, 2} Standing as an apparent paradox to this zero-sum equation are countries such as Canada that ensure access to all at a cost 40% per capita less, with satisfaction and outcomes as good as or better than those in the United States

A National Health Program for the United States: A Physicians' Proposal

Our health care system is failing. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, costs are skyrocketing, and the bureaucracy is expanding. Patchwork reforms succeed only in exchanging old problems for new ones.

Clyde Winter on Health Care

While legislators, judges and politicians and their families enjoy at no cost, for the rest of their lives, the finest comprehensive medical care benefits taxpayers can provide, one out of every six Americans has no medical care insurance.

Compassionate Allowances

Under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act), we pay benefits to individuals who meet our rules for entitlement and have medically determinable physical or mental impairments that are severe enough to meet the definition of disability in the Act. The rules for determining disability can be very complicated, but some individuals have such serious medical conditions that their conditions obviously meet our disability standards.

Pdf 53 kb

Competition in the Medicare Program

Policy analysts and politicians alike recognize the evolving demographic changes that mandate that reforms be made in our Medicare program that will assure that funding will always be available to ensure that health care need never be an issue for the retired and for those with long term disabilities.

The Deteriorating Administrative Efficiency of the US Health Care System

In 1983 the proportion of health care expenditures consumed by administration in the United States was 60 percent higher than in Canada and 97 percent higher than in Britain.

Dispelling Myths Angel

Myths about universal coverage and the look at these misconceptions

PDF / 110 KB

Effect of Tying Eligibility for Health Insurance Subsidies to the Federal Poverty Level

Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to the rapid growth of health insurance premiums and its impact on coverage affordability. Premium growth has far outpaced growth in workers earnings, which means that workers have to spend more of their income each year on health care to maintain current coverage levels.

Executive Summary of Bill-HR 676

The United States National Health Insurance Act (HR676) establishes a new American national health insurance program by creating a single payer health care system. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories.

Financing National Health Insurance

By eliminating unnecessary, duplicative paperwork (with single-source financing) and adopting rational, proven mechanisms to stretch our health care dollars (such as bulk purchasing of medications), the United States can provide comprehensive health care coverage - including long-term care - to every resident of the United States for less than what we are currently spending.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The legislation proposes an effective mechanism for controlling skyrocketing health costs while covering all 42 million uninsured Americans. The bill also restores free choice of physician to patients and provides comprehensive prescription drug coverage to seniors, as well as younger people.

French health

Questions and Answers about the French Health System

PDF / 86 KB

Health Insurance Coverage: 2001

Reversing two years of falling uninsured rates, the share of the

population without health insurance rose in 2001.  An estimated

14.6 percent of the population or 41.2 million people were

without health insurance coverage during the entire year in 2001,

up from 14.2 percent in 2000, an increase of 1.4 million people

Hospitals Save Money, But Safety Is Questioned

A growing number of U.S. hospitals, including at least eight in the Washington area, are saving money by reusing medical devices designated for one-time use, ignoring the warnings of manufacturers, which will not vouch for the safety of their reconditioned products…Hospitals are not required to tell patients that reconditioned devices will be used in surgery -- surgeons themselves often do not know. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the practice, and many hospital administrators say reusing single-use devices is not only cost effective but also poses no threat to patients because the instruments are cleaned with such care that they are as good as new.

How Much Cost

Universal coverage could be finance with a 7% payroll tax

PDF / 111 KB

Impact of AIDS on the Health Sector

The AIDS epidemic poses enormous challenges to the health systems of developing countries. The magnitude of the epidemic requires medical care and social support for those infected. Yet, the threat of future infections demands an effective preventive programme. And AIDS must compete for resources with acute infectious diseases and the growing burden of chronic diseases

51 kb pdf

International Health Systems

Health care systems in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries primarily reflect three types of programs:

Key Features of Single-Payer

A single-payer national health program would eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people who currently perform billing, advertising, eligibility determination, and other superfluous tasks. These workers must be guaranteed retraining and placement in meaningful jobs.

LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR PANDEMIC INFLUENZA

State of Emergency. Under Chapter 639 of the Acts of 1950, the Governor may declare a state of emergency due to (among other circumstances) “the occurrence of any disaster or catastrophe resulting from attack, sabotage or other hostile action; or from riot or other civil disturbance; or from fire, flood, earthquake or other natural causes.” Because an influenza pandemic can be considered a catastrophe resulting from natural causes, the Governor might decide to declare a state of emergency concurrent with declaring a public health emergency, or without declaring a public health emergency.

Liberal Benefits, Conservative Spending

The Physicians for a National Health Program proposes to cover all Americans under a single, comprehensive public insurance program without copayments or deductibles and with free choice of provider. Such a national health program could reap tens of billions of dollars in administrative savings in the initial years, enough to fund generous increases in health care services not only for the uninsured, but for the underinsured as well.

Marketplace: News Archives

Articles on National Healthcare issues

nhi bill final

Proposed bill that would implement universal coverage

PDF / 105 KB

Out Of Control AIDS and the corruption of medical science

Regardless of whether Duesberg is right about HIV, his case, like Fishbein's, lays bare the political machinery of American science, and reveals its reflexive hostility to ideas that challenge the dominant paradigm. Such hostility is not unusual in the history of science,¹⁵ but the contemporary situation is dramatically different from those faced by maverick scientists in the past. Today's scientists are almost wholly dependent upon the goodwill of government researchers and powerful peer-review boards, who control a financial network binding together the National Institutes of Health, academia, and the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Many scientists live in fear of losing their funding. "Nobody is safe," one NIH-funded researcher told me. "The scientific-medical complex is a $2 trillion industry," says former drug developer Dr. David Rasnick, who now works on nutrition-based AIDS programs in Pretoria, South Africa. "You can buy a tremendous amount of consensus for that kind of money."

phantoms

Do Canadians really use the US health system?

PDF / 158 KB

Prescription For Danger

"The insurance companies are pushing all of us around, they're pushing the patient, the consumer, they're pushing the physician and they're pushing the pharmacist." The drugs and dosages an insurance company prefers are called its 'formulary.' We discovered your insurance formulary often depends on secret deals your health plan makes with drug manufacturers. Depending on which drug is not selling well, manufacturers give incentives -- what some call kickbacks.

Press Releases

Press Releases summarize and highlight research done by our members, announcements from the organization, and upcoming events, like debates and television appearances.

Private Health Plans Versus Social Insurance

Private health plans are responsible for much of the administrative waste that uniquely characterizes the health care system of the United States. And for this outrageous cost and inefficiency, these plans are providing highly flawed and inequitable methods of pooling funds and allocating health care resources.

Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Yet despite medical abundance, care is too often meager because of the irrationality of the present health care system. Over 39 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever

An equitable way to pay for universal coverage

This article describes a way to finance universal health care coverage that preserves much of the current financing system

PDF / 345 KB

Reform Aim High Himmelhandler

Single-payer national health insurance could cover the uninsured and upgrade coverage for most Americans without increasing costs.

PDF / 103 KB

romanow final-Canada

Future of Health care in Canada

PDF / 2,391 KB

Single-Payer FAQ

Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for the government and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way.

Single-Payer Myths; Single-Payer Facts

In countries with a national health insurance system, physicians are rarely questioned about their medical practices (and usually only in cases of expected fraud). Compare it to today’s system, where doctors routinely have to ask an insurance company permission to perform procedures, prescribe certain medications, or run certain tests to help their patients.

Sullivan efficiency of managed care plans

The evidence in support of the claim that managed care saves money in inconclusive. Little evidence is on the efficiency of managed care plans compared with FFS plans.

PDF / 59 KB

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States

The U.S. health care system stands alone among advanced industrial countries in lacking a national program to ensure universal or nearly universal health insurance coverage. The various public and private insurance plans and delivery systems (such as the Veterans Administration health system) reflect what John Iglehart characterizes as ''society's profound ambivalence about whether medical care for all is a social good, of which the costs should be borne by society, or a benefit that employers should purchase for employees and their dependents, with government insurance for people outside the work force." This ambivalence, and the resulting lack of any political consensus on how to finance and deliver health services, has resulted in an odd assortment of programs that does provide health insurance to about 85 percent of the population, but leaves some 36 million people uninsured. The uninsured are primarily full-time workers and their dependents who are employed in small firms at a low or the minimum wage.

Universal care-how do we pay for it

Universal Coverage-How do we pay for it

PDF / 107 KB

Vermont SP Analysis

Report on medical coverage in Vermont and how it reduced the cost of healthcare

PDF / 172 KB

What is National Health Insurance

Every person living in the United States and the U.S. Territories would receive a United States National Health Insurance Card and i.d number once they enroll at the appropriate location. Social Security numbers may not be used when assigning i.d cards.

What is Single Payer

In the case of health care, a single-payer system would be setup such that one entity—a government run organization—would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs.

Within the system of no system

Time to rescue the Uninsured-concept of National Healthcare

PDF / 54 KB

Would single payer be good for America

Single payer insurance is commonly defined as a single government fund within each state which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers, replacing the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and health plans.

WHY DO AMERICANS HAVE SUCH POOR HEALTH?

In order to understand the current status of medical care in the U.S., Canada and Europe it is vital to understand that health care in these 3 regions is nearly completely under the control of the pharmaceutical industry. All major pharmaceutical firms have interlocking boards of directors so there is no real competition among these companies. In the United States the primary function of the Federal Drug Administration is to ensure the profitability of pharmaceutical firms, chemical firms and large agricultural conglomerates

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