Anacortes American

Marshall Goldberg, M.D.    Oak Harbor, WA, USA

Posted at 2:01pm on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

To the Editor of the Anacortes American:

Please consider publishing the following guest opinion/editorial in your newspaper. Thank you for your consideration.

Marshall Goldberg, M.D.
4388 Tea Rose Court
Oak Harbor, WA 98277
360-675-5888


On March 5th President Obama, in an effort to further a national discourse on health care reform, summoned leaders from business, labor, health care, and members of Congress to a White House Health Care Summit. While many points of view were represented at this meeting, there was an absence of any discussion of a national health insurance program. Why was it avoided?

Every Congress since 2003 has seen the introduction of House Resolution 676, a bill that would improve and expand Medicare to everyone in the country. This bill would eliminate the onerous administrative costs and restrictions created by the private health insurance industry. It would also free us of the burden of runaway health insurance costs and rein in medical care cost inflation. In exchange for some very modest, progressive taxes, “we the people” would no longer have to pay for premiums, deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and many other out-of-pocket medical expenses. How good is that? Given what the country is currently spending on health care, we are already paying for universal health care – we’re just not getting it.

H.R. 676 would prohibit the private for-profit insurance industry would be prohibited from offering insurance that duplicates what would be provided by the “Medicare for All” bill. It is understandable that the industry would not want the “M” word mentioned at the Health Care Summit. The “public option,” which would allow a government-run program for the general public, was noted only in a passing as just one of many, albeit least desirable, solutions to our health care crisis. In truth, the health insurance industry is fearful of the “public option.” It knows that, were such an option to become a reality, the industry could not compete with it on cost-effective, efficient basis.

Although national polls show a government-run health insurance program like “Medicare for All” is highly favored by a majority of Americans, many members of Congress have yet to get that message. Is it because they have received handsome campaign contributions from the health insurance industry? When they say that “single payer is off the table,” either they have not taken the time to study the history of health care reform in this country, or they’re freely admitting that they have been unduly influenced by such contributions.

The history of health care in the U.S. is rife with multiple, incremental “reforms” that have failed to expand coverage to everyone at a cost that was affordable and sustainable. Mandates, health savings accounts, tax subsidies and tax deductions have all been tried in different settings and have not resolved the problem. Indeed, solving it by using a business model, which treats health insurance as a commodity to be bought by those who can afford it, just doesn’t work?

Based on the successful track record of Medicare in meeting the needs of America’s elderly and disabled for over forty years, a “Medicare for All” program is the only proposal that would meet the medical necessities of everyone. Our national economic security is linked to our health security. The sooner we institute a program where “everyone is in and nobody is out,” the sooner we will achieve the peace of mind that all of us want when it comes to health care. Now is the time to put the people’s needs ahead of those of the “medical-industrial complex.”

Marshall Goldberg, M.D., M.P.H. is a retired physician living in Oak Harbor and a local proponent of single payer universal health care.