We had our meeting this Tuesday, July 6. John Partridge, Steve Weiss, Sam Metz, Jim Scott , and Mike Huntington (by phone) were in attendance. Items:

1. New PNHP Website http://pnhporegon.org. Want to increase awareness of and access to our group (info about membership, info about speakers bureau, links to national site, collaborating groups like JwJ, MAHD, etc) without adding a maintenance burden we can’t keep up with. ACTION: Mike Huntington will contact national office about site management privileges, then we will use an email thread among the group to develop ideas for what to include.

2. League of Women Voters endorsement of single payer. Woo hoo! Agreed we need to maintain interest and offer our support or help. ACTION: Sam Metz will be in touch with LWV to offer our support and encouragement.

3. Jobs With Justice work on state single payer legislation. More discussion of exclusion of plans created under Taft-Hartley. Bottom line is that we support their efforts to advance the cause of single payer in Oregon, and we can work together toward that end. Caution (mine) that we not explicitly endorse something other than SP, but still can work together with JwJ because this legislation moves us in that direction and JwJ is such an important partner in that work. Caution (Mike Huntington’s) that we need to recognize the work of the Oregon Health Fund Board and to the extent we can coordinate with or take into account what they are doing, to maintain good will if nothing else. Request (John Partridge) for input to the subgroup actually writing the legislation. ACTION: Mike Huntington and Betty Johnson will continue to keep track of goings-on in Salem by the Health Fund Board, etc. John Partridge and Kris Alman will continue work with JwJ.

4. Speakers Bureau activity continues. Rotary and Kiwanis groups have been interested, there is also interest from the Oregon Association of Nurseries. We are collecting slidesets to store on our website to make available to speakers (Sam Metz leading). Mike Huntington met with someone who had useful pointers on public speaking and reaching your audience. Much discussion of need to tailor message to audience, modify slidesets as needed for this purpose. ACTION: Paul Gorman will send his “Top Ten Myths” slideset to Sam for distribution.

5. Top Ten Myths. I showed the group my “Top Ten Myths” slideset and discussed points I make with each slide. ACTION: I’ll share the slides with anyone who wants to use them to give a talk.

Next Meeting? Good question. I’ll be out of town the first Tuesday in August.

Thanks everyone for keeping the ball moving on single payer!

Paul Gorman

By Samuel Metz
The Oregonian
May 17, 2010

How much would you pay to keep your private health insurance instead of a single-payer system? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars?

How about $350 billion?

Americans still persist in financing health care with unregulated private insurance. Consequently, our public health is the worst among civilized nations while our costs are the highest, bar none, in the world.

Driving this high cost is overhead – plain old ponderous paperwork generated by our private insurance system – to the tune of $350 billion a year. Make no mistake: This money does not pay for health care. It pays for administrators, accountants, billing clerks and benefits managers to transfer our money to health care providers.

Not all of this goes to private insurance companies, just $126 billion. And not all of that goes to profit and lobbying either. So where does the rest go?

It goes toward coercing insurance companies to pay up.

It isn’t easy for a health care provider to collect from an insurance company. Hospitals need sprawling billing departments, often larger than their nursing staff, to act as collection agencies. Physicians struggle as well. The average doctor spends $68,000 annually cajoling private insurance companies to pay what is owed. A family practitioner in Chicago might find herself dealing with 17,000 different schedules. Suddenly you realize what all those clerks are doing behind the counter at your physician’s office, staring at computer screens and waiting on hold.

Your employer is not spared paperwork either. Your harried boss finds the fine print of health insurance policies as baffling as you do. Hence the need for an expert, maybe dozens, just to keep track of your health care benefits.

It all adds up – to $350 billion.

Clearly filtering our dollars through private insurance companies squanders a lot of money (one dollar out of every three to be exact) before it gets to real-world health care. These losses would evaporate if the U.S. adopted a single-payer system. Mind you, single-payer systems still have administrative costs, just $350 billion less than we have now.

Let’s see how $350 billion in paperwork compares to other costs.

It is more than we spend on immigrant health care ($40 billion), defensive medicine ($60 billion), and health insurance fraud ($72 billion) — combined. It is more than we spend on medications ($261 billion), obesity-related diseases ($144 billion), tobacco-related diseases ($168 billion) or alcohol-related diseases ($96 billion). It’s more than we spent on the Afghanistan war ($179 billion). It’s more than the annual interest on our national debt ($224 billion).

And it’s more than the extra funding needed for comprehensive health care for all Americans ($225 billion).

Curiously, one of America’s own single-payer systems, the Veterans Administration, takes care of the sickest patients with the best results at the lowest cost with the highest patient satisfaction in the nation. Can life without private health insurance paperwork be all that bad?

If we insist on protecting our private health insurance industry with an extra $350 billion each year, we deserve a fair return on our investment.

What return are you getting for your $350 billion?

Samuel Metz is a Portland physician and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and a founding member of Mad As Hell Doctors.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/05/the_price_of_private_health_in.html

Letter to the Editor
The Oregonian
March 24, 2010

I would like to extend a word of caution to those celebrating the passage of the health care reform bill. Nations that provide truly universal access to health services at an affordable price both for families and government use one single system, do not allow for-profit financing of health insurance and make a commitment to provide access to 100 percent of their citizens. The health reform bill does none of these. It builds on our complex health system using largely for-profit insurance companies to provide access while leaving millions uninsured and tens of millions underinsured. This will lead to spiraling costs and eventual breakdown.

It is a shame a single-payer national health insurance system was not considered. It would fulfill the three criteria needed for a successful and affordable health insurance system.

PETER MAHR, M.D.
Southeast Portland

http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2010/03/letters_bike_registration_kalm.html