Chicago Tribune
August 4, 2010
Excerpts from Pro and Con op-eds on Medicare for all
Pro
Rx for Medicare's birthday: Expand it
By Quentin Young
I was in active medical practice on July 30, 1965, when Medicare was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Its impact on older Americans and their families was swift and spectacular. I saw the results with my own eyes.
Almost overnight, millions of Americans age 65 and older had the doors to health care opened to them that had hitherto been closed. They streamed into our doctors' offices seeking long-deferred and sometimes urgently needed medical attention.
Simultaneously, the specter of crushing medical debt was lifted from the shoulders of tens of millions of America's seniors and their children. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief.
In fact, Medicare stands like a rock in a troubled sea of waste, inefficiency and disarray in the rest of our health care system, dominated as it is by big, corporate insurers whose paramount goal is to maximize profits, often by enrolling the healthy, avoiding the sick, raising premiums and denying claims.
Medicare is not without its problems, of course. Its benefits package could be richer. It lacks authority to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. The reimbursement rate to physicians could be enhanced and stabilized, instead of depending on an annual cat-and-mouse game with Congress (the "doc fix") over a flawed accounting formula that only erodes physician confidence in the program.
But the best way to remedy these problems — and to bring down skyrocketing health care costs at the same time — is to improve the program and, most important, to expand it to cover every person in the United States.
That's right: Extend Medicare to everyone. By replacing our crazy-quilt, inefficient system of private health insurers with a streamlined, publicly financed single-payer program, we would reap enormous savings.
First, we would save about $400 billion annually that is presently wasted on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy. That's enough money to cover everyone who is currently uninsured and to upgrade everyone else's coverage without increasing overall U.S. health spending by a single penny.
Patients could go to the doctor and hospital of their choice. They'd be covered for all medically necessary services and medications, with no co-pays or deductibles.
Second, we'd acquire powerful cost-control tools like the ability to purchase medications in bulk, negotiate fees, develop global budgets for hospitals and coordinate capital investments. Such tools would rein in costs and help assure the program's sustainability over the long haul.
It's never too late to do the right thing. So when naysayers urge cuts to Medicare, don't buy it. Tell them to ask Congress to enhance Medicare and to extend it to all.
Dr. Quentin Young is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Con
Patients will end up receiving less care
By Cory Franklin
No physician in the United States has been a more articulate spokesman for the medically disenfranchised in the last half century than Quentin Young; his ideas on health care merit our attention. But he is simply mistaken that the best remedy for our health care problems is to expand Medicare to every American.
Medicare, adopted in 1965, has been a success — albeit a qualified one. Many of its advantages are indisputable, but some are oversold.
Medicare expansion raises the untested arguments of single-payer advocates — savings accrued through lower administrative costs, negotiating fees, global budgets, centralized planning and purchasing.
The biggest problem in expanding Medicare is essentially solving what economist Greg Mankiw calls the trilemma, the three problems of health care delivery — cost, access and quality. Any two might be achieved but the third necessarily suffers. Expanding Medicare could certainly improve access but no one has figured out how to prevent escalating costs or diminishing quality (e.g. less subspecialty care). The question must be asked: Under universal Medicare might the country pay more and see patients receive less?
Dr. Cory Franklin is a physician with NorthShore University HealthSystem.
Comment: Supporters of Medicare for all are already familiar with the Pro position expressed so well by Quentin Young, but you may want to download the full article anyway to share it with others who may be less informed.
The full article on the Con position, written by Cory Franklin, also provides passive support for the Medicare for all position. He argues that 1) Medicare is going broke, 2) physicians are unhappy with Medicare reimbursement rates, 3) there have been many extensive technological advances in the past 45 years, 4) aging and obesity would put a strain on Medicare, 5) patients no longer pay 50 percent of total costs out of pocket, and that 6) there are unintended consequences in a massive government assumption of costs.
The reason that his arguments support Medicare for all is that he provides no alternative to address these issues other than the "untested" policies of the single payer model. In fact, the policies listed have been tested extensively in other nations and proven to be effective in both controlling costs and ensuring health care access for everyone.
A word needs to be said about the oft-repeated common wisdom that cost, access and quality are interdependent and that an improvement in one automatically results in an impairment of one or both of the others. Improve access and costs will go up and quality will go down, they say. This meme has been repeated so often that it is no longer questioned. Even Cory Franklin advances it with his statement: "Expanding Medicare could certainly improve access but no one has figured out how to prevent escalating costs or diminishing quality."
What is the truth? As a universal program, Medicare for all would eliminate financial barriers to access for everyone. Expanded coverage would be paid for initially by the recovery of the profound administrative waste that uniquely characterizes our dysfunctional, fragmented system of financing health care. Not only would costs not increase, but single payer policies that would be put in place would slow the growth in costs to sustainable levels far into the future. A single payer system is also much more adept at identifying and incentivizing beneficial health care practices, thereby improving the quality of care delivered.
The opponents of Medicare for all are locked into the framing of the three-legged stool of cost, access and quality - reinforce one leg and the other two destabilize. We can show them how we can use Medicare for all to reinforce all three legs - proving universal access to higher quality care while controlling costs - to provide a solid, permanent structure of affordable, high quality care for everyone.
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