Single Payer Healthcare: Myths vs. Facts 2

By Bill Schneider, RN

In our first newsletter, I wrote about the misinformation that persists about a single payer healthcare system despite the fact that implementing it in the United States would result in overall savings. Let’s continue to debunk myths about a single-payer healthcare system so we can educate the public and our colleagues and encourage them to become healthcare advocates.

Together, we can create a New York where healthcare as a human right.

MYTH: You have “choice” in the American healthcare “free-market” system.

FACT: You have the illusion of choice in our current system. Let us pretend that health insurance is like a restaurant. For the most of us with private insurance, our employers pay a majority of the costs so they get to choose which “restaurants” we can go to (think “in or out of network”) and what is available on the “menu” (what services, tests, or treatments are paid for; our co-pays costs, etc). However, employers are mainly concerned with the cost of restaurant (insurance), not where we can eat or what’s on the menu! Making things worse is the fact that insurance companies don’t really care if we as patients like the restaurant choices, or the menu available because WE really aren’t their customer, the employers is! The current system is one where most Americans don’t control how our healthcare dollars are spent. Getting different healthcare “menus” and “restaurant” choices dictated to us by our employers isn’t really a “choice” or a “free-market.”

MYTH: A “free-market” is the most efficient way to deliver and pay for care.

FACT: Single-payer healthcare reform could save up to $200 billion annually in the US if insurance overhead was brought down to the same level as Medicare or other single-payer systems like Canada. Hospitals and providers would also benefit if our complex and multi-payer system was simplified. For example, the Cleveland Clinic has over 210 MILLION different prices for different insurers. How is this efficient? The free-market also allows insurance companies to develop terrible “Medicare Advantage” programs (which aren’t any kind of advantage). These programs are highly profitable for Insurance companies by limiting provider choice and services, striving to “cherry pick” healthy patients, and “lemon drop” the sickest patients out of their programs. These incentives force traditional Medicare to act as a “high risk pool” for private insurance companies so they can maximize private profit and force the cost of the sickest patients back onto taxpayers. Our current system is in no way efficient!