By David Gordon, associate editor
Single payer health care coverage is an idea whose time hasn’t quite come, a local proponent of this approach said recently.
But that hasn’t stopped Dr. Steven Weiss from working hard to sell the idea and recruit support for it. Weiss said in a recent interview that moving to a single payer system would promote equality for both the opportunity to access health care and, at least as important, the outcomes of that access.
“Health care is a human right,” he said, but the challenge is figuring out how best to reach that goal and developing the support to make it happen.
Weiss wrote, in a recent Leader-Telegram op-ed article that the United States spends “far more on health care than any other nation” but still lags “behind other countries in health outcomes, including life expectancy and infant mortality.” This stems in part from the fact that 30 percent of health care spending “goes to profit and administration, a percentage that dwarfs all other countries,” he wrote.
“Our current patchwork health care system doesn’t do enough to encourage appropriate care,” he added.
One of 11 co-signers
Weiss was one of 11 people listed co-signers of that article, all of whom are involved in the formation of a western Wisconsin chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Weiss is an Altoona resident and Mayo Clinic Health Care System internist who has practiced medicine here for 30 years. He was the only Eau Claire area signer.
Weiss said the new chapter held its first meeting last month. Its next step, he said, will be to meet with Rep. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse) in an effort to persuade him to become a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act of 2019. That bill was introduced in the House last month by its lead sponsor, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington).
Weiss said the bill currently has slightly over 100 co-sponsors, but the only one from Wisconsin is Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison). The legislation has been endorsed by the national PNHP organization.
The PNHP is about 30 years old, Weiss said. It is “a single issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program” and has more than 21,000 members nationally, according to its website.
Employer-based health care
Health care provided by employers got its start in the United States during World War II. Potential employees were scarce then, and legislation designed to combat potential wartime inflation prevented employers from raising wages to attract them.
Instead, health benefits were introduced as an employment incentive. Weiss said this incentive continued after the war in an effort to attract servicemen returning to civilian life, and became the country’s model.
“There’s no good reason for health care to be tethered to employment,” Weiss said. “It’s just a historical anomaly.”
Everyone deserves access. . .
Weiss said he got involved with the western Wisconsin PNHP group because of his belief that everyone deserves access to quality health care. He currently is president of the Chippewa Valley Free Clinic’s board of directors and chairs its capital campaign.
He said the formation of the regional PNHP chapter is being spearheaded by Dr. Mark Neumann, a retired pediatric intensive care specialist from La Crosse.
Three key issues
Weiss said there are three key issues that face the current health care system: access, cost and quality. He said the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) has “bent the cost curve” a little, compared to double-digit annual cost increases for health care in the 1990s.
In his Leader-Telegram article, Weiss wrote that a single-payer system would not be “a ‘government takeover’ of health care” because the federal government – through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration – “already pays nearly two-thirds of health care costs.
“The existing infrastructure of hospitals and clinics and medical schools will be unaffected,” he wrote.
Note: Weiss’ op-ed article in the Leader-Telegram appeared on Mar. 17.
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