Several years ago, I sat next to a colleague at a conference. She was CEO of a much-larger-than-SOS behavioral health software company. We were listening to a presentation on costs and duplication of services to chronically mentally ill Medicaid recipients, and the efforts of community mental health organizations to provide needed services with limited Medicaid dollars. We looked at one another and agreed that the only way all of us, including the most vulnerable populations, are ever going to get reasonably priced high-quality healthcare services is when we have a single payer system.
Many of you know that I have spent the past eight years as primary caregiver for my elderly mother. A result of that process is significant experience with the Medicare system. My mother used traditional Medicare: doctors billed for services provided. Medicare and a Medigap policy paid for all covered services. Medicare Part D paid about 60% of medication costs. Our experience with the Medicare system was nothing but positive. Mom paid her extremely reasonable Medicare, Medigap and Part D premiums and she received all the care she needed from caring, outstanding providers.
This morning, I read my issue of FierceHealthPayer. They reported that a new study from Physicians for a National Health Program shows that we could save approximately $592 billion in healthcare expenditures next year if Medicare were extended to all. Gerald Friedman, Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst details how these savings could be accomplished through a single payer system proposed in HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.
Dr. Friedman’s focus is on administrative costs. You know about those. They include your costs in meeting the requirements of myriad insurers in order to get paid for the services you render to your clients. Those costs include software, claim forms or clearinghouse fees, staff salaries and benefits, long distance charges for hours spent on hold with insurance carriers to verify coverage and object to claim rejections, to list only a few. These costs include insurer’s expenditures for their side of those same processes…and employers costs to shop for, administer, and pay for coverage.
Don’t think about other countries and their health care systems. Think about our 48 years with Medicare. Maybe Dr. Friedman and Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan), author of the bill, are onto something.