Why Not Single Payer Health Care?

Saving cost is all about cutting out the middle man in health care. Every reputable study on the subject agrees on this point. By eliminating our current middleman, the insurance companies' profit and overhead, we can save countless billions of dollars. Sounds simple enough to me. The single payer system, which eliminates the middle man, is the most efficient way to handle health care. Existing systems in other countries also attest to this fact. In our country where we spend more on health care than anywhere else in the world $7200 per person per year, but rank behind thirty countries in life expectancy, infant mortality and many other measures of health, single payer would appear to be a "no brainer".

HR 676 is proposed in the house with 87 sponsors is just such a single payer system. It is also supported by the largest physician group in the country outside of the AMA., but has very little chance of passage. The administration supports another bill, HR 3200, which is not a single payer solution.

Why then is the administration not going down this path? Why are they proposing to maintain the inefficient health insurance companies existing middleman system? They would give the consumer a government middleman option, a provision which seems to be generating the most heat from opponents and may not make it through Congress, which would duplicate the existing inefficient system with another government bureaucracy.

The answer to this seeming paradox lies deep in the morass of Washington, D.C. More specifically underneath the infamous K Street.

Lobbyists for the health insurance companies and pharmaeceuticals have been Republican and Democrat Congressman's biggest benefactors for decades. A health care bill eliminating the insurance companies could not obtain approval in either house. The Obama administration recognized this glaring fact early on and met with pharmaceutical companies and Health Insurance companies. They reached an agreement by agreeing to abide by existing drug price policies with the pharmaceuticals and won their support. The insurance companies agreed not to bring out their "big guns" in opposition, provided the administration did not propose a single payer system. Their "little guns" seem to be aimed at the government option provision.

That is the way Washington works. What will we end up with? A health care program that will increase cost, for sure. Hopefully, the new costly system will provide better health care for more people.