Articles from Our Doctors
Medicare for All is the Answer
William Davidson, Jr. MD
Of the 30 million Americans who have lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic 5 million have also lost their health insurance. While workers in Canada and Taiwan have also been displaced none of them have lost their health insurance because health care in their countries is not linked to employment. This is also true of the elderly in the U.S. who are covered by Medicare although America’s Medicare is in need of improvement because over the years the forces of privatization have led to many financial gaps in coverage.
Some Americans reject and do not wish to pay for a Canadian-styled universal healthcare system because it would enable the undeserving lazy and intemperate to have access to health care. Those who object to a universal healthcare system for this reason should consider the example of our highway system.
Murders, gangsters, pimps and drug dealers all travel freely on our roads because we, as a nation, feel that the benefits to the vast majority of our citizens who play by the rules far outweighs the benefits to the criminal element.
Similarly, an Improved Medicare for All healthcare system should not be denied to the vast majority because of the few who are perceived to not deserve it.
While the assurance that one can never lose availability to quality healthcare is the greatest advantage of a universal system there are many other advantages as well. For instance, Canadians pay half as much for their health care while living longer and with a lower infant mortality rate. As of July,2020 Canada’s per capita mortality rate from Covid-19 was half that of the U.S.
Improved Medicare for All is the answer to America’s immediate healthcare and economic crises and assures great long term benefits as well.
Let’s Present Medicare Fairly
William Davidson, Jr. MD
David Wenner’s Sunday’s Patriot News article explaining the differences between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage Programs should be considered an advertisement for the private health insurance industry rather than a thoughtful, unbiased presentation of information. For instance, Wenner’s article fails to mention that Medicare Advantage Plans restrict your choice of doctors and hospitals making Seniors vulnerable to “surprise, out of network” billing. On the other hand, and never mentioned in the article, Traditional Medicare has always given Seniors the choice of doctors and hospitals.
Wenner’s article goes on to mention that the private Advantage plans “make money through prevention”. That sounds good but, a more accurate explanation for the private insurer’s profits is that, through lobbying efforts, the federal government (America’s taxpayers) pays them 12% more than Traditional Medicare. Illegal “up-coding” and other questionable practices have also padded the private insurer’s bottom line.
Probably the most telling line in the article was “if you have cancer,” you will probably want to get Traditional Medicare. In other words, if you are or will become sick, it’s Traditional Medicare that is your real friend for life.
Labels
William Davidson Jr. MD
As momentum builds for Single Payer Medicare for All health care reform, we once again hear from Conservatives that this reform is part of a Socialist plot that will send the country down the road to freedom-destroying Communism. That same refrain was uttered 60 years ago by Ronald Reagan as he urged the country to reject Traditional Medicare, the health care system that has proven to serve our senior and disabled citizens so well.
Of course, such philosophical criticism is merely a cover for the exploitive private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies that regularly extract billions for CEO salaries and stockholder dividends while our citizens must live with the prospects of high insurance premiums, health insecurity, and medical bankruptcy.
In this world of information overload all of us must deal with labels because there is neither the time or energy to analyze each important issue thoroughly. The opinion-shapers know this and attempt to influence us with phrases that capture our emotions rather than to sway us with honest information. For instance, we hear a lot about “government run healthcare” as a negative directed at Medicare for All. The truth is that Medicare for All leaves the doctor-patient relationship intact while it is our present system that constrains us to doctor/hospital networks determined by the private insurance industry. We have been instructed to fear “socialized medicine” even though the VA has served our veterans quite well for many years.
Republicans are not alone in playing the “labels” game. Some notable Democrats have stated that Medicare for All would be “unaffordable” due to “higher taxes”. While all Single payer systems run much less expensively than our present, profit-first system, invoking such labels often ends a meaningful discussion before it can begin.
So, if the information one receives is directed to our emotions rather than our mind, it is most likely a dishonest plan intended to steer us away from the truth. Improved Single Payer Medicare for All promises to provide everyone with quality, affordablehealthcare which is something our present system is not doing.
In America, unlike Single Payer countries, we have 30 million uninsured and 60 million underinsured. We trail the rest of the industrialized world in infant and maternal mortality as well as preventable deaths. We pay twice as much as Canadians for our healthcare and we are the only industrialized country with medically related bankruptcies. These are facts—not labels meant to pedal lies.
IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL: THE PERI ANALYSIS: IT WILL COST LESS
Dwight Michael, MD
The 2018 elections are now complete. Nine percent of Americans still do not have health insurance and 30% more are under-insured, meaning that they cannot afford the health care that they need. There are precious few of us that do not know a friend or loved one who has suffered the consequences.
“A team of economists from the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) has found that the Medicare for All Act of 2017, introduced to the United States Senate by Senator Bernie Sanders, is not only economically viable, but could actually reduce health consumption expenditures by about 9.6 percent while also providing decent health care coverage for all Americans.”
Economist and public policy expert Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, in reviewing the researchers’ analysis, states “This study is the most comprehensive, detailed, authoritative study ever undertaken of Medicare for All, and it points powerfully and unassailably in support of MFA. “Medicare for All” promises a system that is fairer, more efficient, and vastly less expensive than America’s bloated, monopolized, over-priced and under-performing private health insurance system. Read more >>
MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PROGRAMS
Bill Davidson, MD
(An advantage for the Private Insurance Industry but, a disadvantage for America)
The November 13th editorial page of the LDN contained an article from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette which warned our elderly citizens to be cautious about choosing a Medicare Advantage plan instead of Traditional Medicare. The article noted that the Advantage plans, run by the private insurance industry, may be less expensive; however, they usually come with restrictive networks unlike government run Traditional Medicare which gives seniors the freedom to choose whichever hospital or doctor they wish. While the article attempted to present both options in an unbiased fashion, it entirely left out a major concern that not only impacts seniors but younger Americans as well. Read more >>
Medicare-for All has the Right Wing Worried
Dr Davidson writes about the establishment’s concern “that Medicare-for-All is gaining too much traction with ordinary Americans. They see Medicare-for-All as a tilt toward socialism which is a threat to their philosophy and their pocketbooks….”
As Likely as Donald Trump being elected the President of the United States
Dwight Michael M.D., a family physician who is a member of Gettysburg Area Democracy for America’s healthcare task force and a board member of Healthcare 4 All PA, discusses the likelyhood of “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act
Dr Davidson, a Board member of Healthcare 4 All PA, wrote this article for the Lebanon Daily News discussing the Affordable Care Act.
Patients deserve better than our piecemeal system
Dr Talarico, a HealthCare4AllPA Member, wrote this article for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the state of our healthcare system.
The Pennsylvania Health Care Plan: Negotiating Drug Pricing for a Safer, Healthier Pennsylvania
Dr Tyson,a founding member of Healthcare for All PA, spoke at Public Citizen’s Mylan-Epipen Protest at the company’s Canonsburg, PA headquarters.
Dr. Davidson is a Cardiologist and a HealthCare for All PA board member.
William R. Davidson, Jr., M. D., a founding member of Health Care for All PA as well as a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, speaks of a thyroid patient of his and what she faced when she no longer had health insurance.
Underinsurance is the New Norm
Dwight Michael M.D., a family physician who is a member of Gettysburg Area Democracy for America’s healthcare task force and a board member of Healthcare for All PA, shines a spotlight on the critical issue of those who remain underinsured, reinforcing the need for single payer.
Can we have a free market for health care? Consider the problems and a solution in an entertaining series of slides by HealthCare for All PA board member Arno Vosk, MD