PCUSA official supports
government-run health plan
By Edward Terry, The Layman, August 14, 2009
Presbyterian Church (USA) Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons weighed in on the national health care reform debate Friday by reiterating a resolution from the denomination’s 2008 General Assembly that demeans the quality of American health care, condemns profits earned by private insurance companies, dedicates mission money to lobbying efforts and supports the call for a government-run, single-payer system.
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Among its lobbying efforts on behalf of the administration’s health care proposals, the PCUSA’s Washington Office has announced an Aug. 19 “faith community conference call” with President Barack Obama. The announced goal of the call “is to connect and energize the millions of people of faith across the country who are concerned about health care and who want to be part of the solution.”
Through the Office of General Assembly Web site and the Witness in Washington Weekly e-mail newsletter, Parsons said the statement was issued due to questions about PCUSA’s stand on health care reform. The questions come as the national debate has reached a boiling point as elected leaders are speaking at packed town hall meetings during the Congressional break and media outlets are saturated with debate coverage.
“Consensus as a nation is imperative because reforming our health care system cannot wait,” Parsons said. “The General Assembly has been clear that Congress must enact comprehensive health care reform that will provide all persons with access to health care services.”
A resolution approved by the 218th General Assembly, which met last summer in San Jose, Calif., outlines the denomination’s support of a single-payer system of health insurance for the country’s uninsured. The action also routed $25,000 from the denomination’s mission budget to a political action network called Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association for the purpose of hosting 10 regional, one-day seminars supporting universal health care.
The resolution’s opening statement uses statistics such as the U.S. infant mortality rate, health care costs and number of uninsured to support of its position. It also criticizes $68 billion in profit by U.S. health insurance companies and claims that U.S. businesses operate at a disadvantage internationally because other industrialized nations assume health care costs.
“Our federal government already operates efficiently and with low overhead the health delivery programs of Medicare and Medicaid; and yet at the same time insurance companies spend nearly one-third of every premium dollar on marketing and other administrative costs and in fact, several such companies spend less than 60 percent of premium dollars they receive on health care services,” the resolution said. “Only a single-payer system of national health care coverage (privately provided; publicly financed; not socialized medicine) can save what is estimated to be $350 billion wasted annually on medical bureaucracy and redirect those funds to expand coverage.”
The most common theory for a single-payer system calls for an expanded version of the existing Medicare system. Even though the PCUSA resolution describes existing government-run programs as being “efficient” and having “low overhead costs,” critics of a single-payer system disagree.
An Aug. 13 Wall Street Journal article by Alan Miller, chairman and CEO of Universal Health Services Inc., warns that single-payer systems have proven inadequate in other countries and the same would happen in the United States if implemented.
“Medicare reimbursements to hospitals fail to cover the actual cost of providing services,” Miller said. “The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional advisory agency, says hospitals received only 94.1 cents for every dollar they spent treating Medicare patients in 2007. MedPAC projects that number to decline to 93.1 cents per dollar spent in 2009, for an operating shortfall of 7 percent. Medicare works because hospitals subsidize the care they provide with revenue received from patients who have commercial insurance. Without that revenue, hospitals could not afford to care for those covered by Medicare. In effect, everyone with insurance is subsidizing the Medicare shortfall, which is growing larger every year.”
The most common criticisms of current health care reform proposals are that it could lead to a government-sponsored health care monopoly, bureaucrats making medical decisions rather than doctors and patients, cuts for existing Medicare recipients, reductions in health care quality, higher taxes and additional national debt.
The American Hospital Association also expressed concerns about a plan that would pay at Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement levels. An AHA survey shows that 58 percent of hospitals lost money serving Medicare patients in 2007 and Medicaid paid hospitals 88 cents for each dollar spent on its patients in 2007.
“The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) projects that hospitals will have a negative 6.9 percent Medicare margin in 2009 – down from a positive 6.2 percent Medicare margin in 1999 – the lowest level in more than a decade,” an AHA statement said.
The debate, which has divided the country basically along political party lines, also has focused on the speed at which the legislation is moving. Based on Parsons’ statement, “reforming our health care system cannot wait,” PCUSA has joined in the full-court press for passage.