FAQS and Figures

To summarize our message of a Single Payer Medicare For All:

The health care debate can be won by forcing the focus of the health care debate on phrases such as:

• Saving the Free Enterprise System of the doctors
• Spread the risk – Medicare is a restricted insurance pool of only old people, the highest risk. Basic rule of sensible insurance must be applied to secure its future. Expand Medicare insurance to non-seniors.
• Cost efficiency of non-profit Medicare – 2% to 3% as opposed to 20% to 30% wastage from middleman private for-profit HMOs.
• Savings of over $300 billion a year could cover prescription drugs and long term care, while covering everyone.
• Restoring precious choice of one’s own doctor.

Medicare for All results in shrinking the size of government, so:

No more need for following Federal Bureaucracies:

• Medicaid
• Tri Care
• Kidney DialysisFund
• Tuberculosis Fund
• Aids Fund
• Breast Cancer Fund
• Native American Health Care
• Expanded in home services for elderly(EISEP) QMB, SLIMB, and QI-1 for low income people (who are not poor enough for Medicaid)

No more need for the following NY State programs:

• Epic (Drug assistance for some over 65 years old)
• Child Health Plus
• Family Health Plus
• S Chip

Also:

• Workmens Compensation and Auto Insurance costs will drop as all medical payments are covered in the new system.
• Veterans would now have choice of family doctors and other hospitals
• We can also eliminate the 72% Government subsidy of Government Employees Insurance(FEHBP), plus the Office Of Personnel Management’s 153 full time employees who administer the private plans, each with the 20%-30% wastage

A Single Payer Medicare for All health care plan would have the backing of the 14,000 member Physicians For A National Health Plan(PNHP), New England Journal of Medicine, Thousands of Doctors from the American College of Physicians, American College of Surgeons and many other medical organizations. (The American Medical Association only represents 32% of all Physicians). The new generation of doctors favors a new health care system.

Columnists who would support a Medicare for All health care plan are:

Marie Cocco, Robert Reno, Dennis Duggan, Saul Friedman of Newsday
Jack Germond of Baltimore Sun and TV talk shows
Mark Shields of CNN Capital Gang, Lehrer Nightly News Show of PBS, and a syndicated newspaper columnist.

–

This summary created by:

Joe Kane,
Associate Publisher of Long Beach Independent Voice
Executive Board, LI Coalition For A National Health Plan
and
Dr. James Bernstein,
Past President, LICNHP
Former Professor of Internal Medicine at Einstein College of Medicine
Former President of Long Island Gastroenterological Association at SUNY Stonybroook