Doctors Want National Health Care, But Politicians Keep Quiet

By: Shuka Kalantari

What do you get when the fourth richest country in the world has a health care system that ranks 37th? An uneven equation.

There are 47 million uninsured people in the United States. Polls show that the majority of Americans support a national, or single-payer, health care system, yet the mainstream media is not talking much about it because there is little discussion from politicians. Campaign contributions and lobbying by the health care industry make single-payer health care a taboo subjects for politicians who feel indebted to their contributors.

Stephanie Woolhandler, an associate professor at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHP), said that single-payer health care is sometimes marginalized in the media because it is often marginalized by the leadership of both Democratic and Republican parties due to intensive lobbying.

“Our campaign financing system forces politicians to be responsive to those with money,” said Woolhander. “In this case, the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.”

According to The Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group researching political spending, pharmaceutical and health product companies have already spent $11.5 million contributing to both parties in the 2008 election campaigns, and health professional industries have spent more that $34 million. Such contributions are keeping many politicians quiet.

But most physicians are speaking out. A recent poll, conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine, shows that 59 percent of American physicians are in support of a single-payer health program. And more than two-thirds of pediatricians and emergency medicine doctors are in support of it.

Under a single-payer system, the government would collect all health care premiums and pay all costs within one system. In the current system, tens of thousands of different agencies pay the bills, created a fragmented and expensive administrative system. The US spends almost one-third of every health care dollar on administrative costs. But such telling statistics won’t make the front-page of the dailies – that is, until prominent politicians address it.

“In 2003 Barack Obama was campaigning for a single-payer plan,” said Katie Robbins, the assistant national coordinator for Healthcare-NOW!, a single-payer advocacy group. “But I imagine his advisors told him that continuing with the single-payer stance might be too radical and too risky to build his platform.”

But single-payer health care is not too radical for all politicians. About four years ago, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan introduced bill HR 676, The United States Health Insurance Act, an expanded form of Medicare providing national health insurance in the United States. As of January 2008, HR 676 has been 88 state representatives and 97 labor unions nationwide support the bill.

Many advocates argue that it’s a matter of time before politicians – and subsequently the media – will give a single-payer plan more attention.

 “If you asked people in 1960 if it was possible to reverse segregation in the south, people would have laughed and said it was impossible, that it would never happen,” said Oliver Fein, the New York chair of PHNP and a medical professor at Cornell University. “But it did happen. We still do live in a democracy and if people become very convinced that this is the way to go than we can do it. Everyone should have a right to health care. That’s what’s fair."