Single-payer health care teach-in at UAF

Addendum 6/30/09: this teach in was postponed and will be rescheduled.

Neil Davis is a guest speaker at a teach-in on single-payer health care systems to be held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, Saturday, June 27, from 1 to 5 pm at the Boyd Berry Auditorium in the Reichardt Building (the Natural Sciences Facility).

In the midst of the health care reform debate, single-payer health care, although a system successfully used in many industrialized countries, including Australia, Canada, and Taiwan, is not even being considered by Congress. Why? Is it a viable option? How does this system work? What advantages does it have over our own? What disadvantages? How does it compare to our own system, or that of countries like Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, New Zealand, or the Netherlands? Explore these questions and others at this event.

Talk of Alaska

I will be on Steve Heimel's APRN "Talk of Alaska" program airing at 10:00 am tomorow, Tuesday, June 9. We will be talking about the progress of health care reform.

Addendum 6/9/09: a link to the broadcast is available at the Talk of Alaska website. Senator Hollis French (D-Anchorage) was Steve Heimel's other guest.

Community Perspective by Richard Seifert on universal health care

Rich Seifert's piece in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner today has provoked quite a lot of comment on the merits (or perceived lack therof) of a single-payer universal health care system. He writes this:

Davis ultimately compares our system to those of other industrialized nations, making a compelling case for a publicly financed system of single-payer national health insurance.

All the members of the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Foundation have a copy of this book, and I hope they have all read it. It is hard to do so and not come to the conclusion that the U.S. desperately needs a universal, publicly financed health care system. What’s more though, is that we as a nation also need to totally eliminate the insurance industry’s hold on our payer system.

The comments are very interesting, ranging from the irate to the very thoughtful and informative with supporting links and references. "Stakeholder" has found some very intriguing testimony by Dr. Linda Peeno to the US House subcommittee on Health and Environment.

Davis to participate in the 3rd Alaska Book Festival

The 2009 Alaska Book Festival will be held in Fairbanks on June 11, 12, and 13, with the theme "Historically Alaska." Neil Davis will be available during the general author book signings on Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th (4 to 6 pm each day at the Exhibit Hall at Pioneer Park) . He will also be on a panel discussion from 10 to 11:30 am on Saturday, "Writing, Publishing, and Marketing Your Book," in the theatre at Pioneer Park.

A cartoonist's view of the health care reform hoo-hah

Peter Dunlap-Shohl, former editorial cartoonist for the Anchorage Daily News, has a new blog on health care issues and reform: Gurney to the Dark Side. Check it out: he takes a grim subject and puts a bit of much-needed levity into it while skewering the absurdities of our current health care system with that pen of his.

An example that Alaska should not follow

In the May Dose of Reality, Neil Davis examines the results of the Massachusetts Health Reform Law of 2006. In short, the reform has failed.

There is of course a reason for the failure. The framers of the Massachusetts legislation refused to address head-on the major problem with American health care: the control exerted upon it by the private for-profit health insurance industry. They did not just ignore the problem, they exacerbated it by giving the industry even more power than it had before to dictate to many more Massachusetts residents who gets health care and how much.

Davis warns that this may be relevant to Alaskans' health care future because

Despite the failure of the Massachusetts health insurance reform, Alaska may find itself led down the same garden path to higher health care costs and decreasing access to health care. An attempt to push the state in that unfortunate direction was made in the 2008 legislative session by the introduction of SB 160. The sponsors emphasized that the bill was patterned after the Massachusetts legislation enacted earlier. Senate Bill 160 failed to pass the senate, but Senators Hollis French and Johnny Ellis, both Democrats, resurrected it as SB 61 (short-titled Mandatory Universal Health Insurance) during the just-concluded 2009 session. Although SB 61 went through several hearings, it was in committee when the session ended and is still alive for consideration during the next legislative session.

A comparison of single-payer and multi-payer systems

The United States uses a multi-payer, for-profit health care system, with some elements that are not for profit, such as Medicare. Our system is administered privately, and operates from a market-based view, i.e., that health care is a commodity. Canada, on the other hand, uses a single-payer system that, while still for-profit, is administered publicly, and operates from the assumption that health care is a right. Our system is financially out of control, and incredibly wasteful and complex. Canada's is fairly simple, and far less expensive. Not only that, Canada's system is rated as better by the World Health Organization than is ours.

The recent hearings in Congress on possible reform measures, headed by Senator Max Baucus, have one striking feature: proponents of instituting a single-payer system in the US have not been invited to participate. Thus, protestors, representing organizations such as the California Nurses Association and Physicians for a National Health Care Program, have taken to interrupting the proceedings to make their point.

Below are two graphic representations of just why our system is so expensive and Canada's is so much cheaper, and yet still outperforms ours. These are taken from Neil Davis' book.