St. Augustine Record Letter: Medicare for all will save money, provide decent, affordable health care for all!

Letter: Nation needs a 'Medicare for all' health care system

Posted: December 13, 2011 - 11:41pm

By Robin Nadeau

St. Augustine Beach

Editor: In response to an editorial from the Northwest Florida Daily News in The Record on Friday, nothing could be further from the truth. America’s privately run, for profit healthcare industry is ranked 37th in the world, according to the World Health Organization, far from being the “best in the world.”

We have a worse infant mortality rate than impoverished Cuba; And Americans die from more serious ailments, and die younger than in other advanced nations, even though they spend almost half as much as we do on health care — because most of them benefit from a government run, single payer system, very similar to our VA system. To quote my son, a neurologist at University of Florida, who also cares for the veterans in the excellent VA hospital, across the road from Shands: “The VA is the best system in America.” Not only does it cost far less to care for our veterans, but, unlike our regular privately run health insurance system, the VA has brokered a far cheaper rate of payment for pharmaceuticals, so that prescription drugs cost a fraction of the high costs that the rest of us pay. If you were to give veterans a voucher for the cost of their health care, they would have to pay a hefty amount out of their own pockets.

There has been “market competition” among the private health insurance companies for years, and yet their prices keep soaring.

Also, our factories that produce goods that we would like to market overseas are unable to compete with the nations with government run healthcare systems, due to the heavy costs of private health insurance for their employees (it costs an average of $2,000 extra per vehicle).

We need a “Medicare for All” system of health care for all Americans. Medicare Administration costs 3 percent, whereas private insurance companies charge an average of 31% to administer their systems, which is required to pay the exorbitant remuneration for their top executives, plus profits for their share holders; added to that, private doctors are obliged to hire experts to sort through the varied billing required by the private insurers, which probably accounts for 59 percent of doctors who would choose a single payer system under Medicare.