A step forward for Healthcare

Portland Obama Fans, Pioneer Square Election Night!

Last night, my roommates and I ran through the streets banging pots and pans in honor of a momentous occasion – Barack Obama has been elected president.

When I first started paying attention to the democratic candidates, one of the first things I looked at was their stances on health care reform. Barack Obama appealed to me on so many levels, but his ideas for health care, though they are a step in the right direction, are not radical enough in my mind. He proposes that we build on our current insurance system and leave Medicare intact. He also wants to mandate health care coverage for children and require that employers contribute to coverage or contribute payroll toward a national plan, which would include coverage similar to the kind that members of Congress receive. But I believe his proposals are not getting to the root of the problem: the insurance system.

Our country is in dire need of health care reform, and to me, there is only one solution – a single payer system. So when I was researching the democratic candidates for president, I realized that Dennis Kucinich is in favor of a single payer system. He said, back in 2004, that his “proposal shifts the whole system into a not-for-profit system. It eliminates these corporate profits and stock options and executive salaries, the advertising, lobbying, marketing costs.” Funding for the single payer system will come primarily from existing government healthcare spending (more than $1 trillion) and taxes on employers. The employers' tax is less than the 8.5% of payroll now paid on average by companies that provide private insurance. This type of system -- privately-delivered health care, publicly financed -- has worked well in other countries, none of whom spend as much per capita on healthcare as the United States.

I know that this is not an easy solution and it probably will not be possible in our society in the near future (not to sound too despondent!). Sometimes I think that our priorities as a nation are slightly skewed. Why is it that we are required to have insurance for our cars but not our bodies? I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege to those that can afford it.

I think a large part of the problem is our reliance on prescription drugs. Patients often want quick fixes to problems or illnesses they have, and doctors all-to-often whip out that prescription pad. I think that a lot of pharmaceuticals are very beneficial, and often they are called-for, but paying $30,000 for a year supply of an anti-cancer medication is absolutely ridiculous! I used to work for a pharmaceutical company, and it would often make me shiver to think about how much money is spent on research and marketing. My benefits were pretty good, my salary was sufficient, and yet the executives were riding and dining in luxury, receiving six-figure bonuses. Another problem in the current system revolves around the administrative costs of insurance companies. According to one of our reading assignments, about 20% of money spent on health care in the U.S. is just going to overhead costs. If we could only funnel that money towards actual health care (or perhaps incentives and scholarships for medical students entering Family Medicine!!), our system would be better off.

Whenever I hear Dr. Saultz speak, I am inspired to become a general practitioner and contribute to the revolution of health care in this country by providing primary, preventative care. I think that he summed up our future health system nicely – as a nation, we need to promote universal access, define health of the public as our goal, create a way to deliver better care at lower costs, and partner with others to define and promote core attributes of a new care model. We need to partner with our patients, increase spending on primary care, mental health and public health, which would hopefully decrease overall health care costs.
Yes, I am excited to have a new president and though I know he won’t be able to change the course of health care immediately, we are making a great leap forward.