Grahamazon Makes Newsday
Saul Friedman is a columnist for Newsday, a daily paper for Long Island and New York. He saw my single-payer animation, and liked it so much that he turned it into his weekly column for this week! The quotes aren’t exact, but they’re not way off. Just to clarify:
How can the United States pay for a similar single-payer system to cover 300 million? “Money would come from employers and employees,” Walker says, “but most of the money is already in the system — it’s just currently going to HMOs [and other private insurers] instead of to a single payer.”
Money would come from employers and employees–that is, taxpayers. Did you know that 60% of the health care dollars are paid by government already? So we already have 60% of the money being collected by government. That other 40%? Most of it is dollars from private employers paying HMOs to insure private employees. That 40% would be sent to the single-payer instead of a number of different HMOs. It’s not *new* money. It’s just redirected.
As for employees, some funding schemes also have a personal income tax–but usually only for people making more than ~$90,000 a year. A Ohio single-payer group put together a proposal that lists how much Ohio residents would pay for single-payer in Ohio (Word doc).
If you’d like to see the studies citing single-payer as saving a substantial amount of money, look no further than The California Health Care Options Project, The Vermont Single-Payer Study, The Maryland Single-Payer Study, Massachusetts Health Care Studies,and Maine’s Single-Payer Microsimulation. Just to be clear, these analyses were done by The Lewin Group and Mathematica Consulting, two economic analyst groups. Not single-payer supporters.
I also found a great new site that summarizes state reform policies. Thanks Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for statecoverage.net.
graham’s single payer animation makes newsday
congrats to graham for the props from newsday for his animation advocating national single payer health insurance …
Congrats!
And your blog is awesome.
You know, I really think everybody in the USA should consider this issue in terms of healthcare for everyone instead of how much it will cost. But then, I’m Canadian so … you know…biased opinion over here.
Great post :-)
So, now what should I call this place? Over my med body, or gramamazon? :) just wondering what you prefer. by the way, your ‘about’ page leads to your old site at the end.
Graham,
Congratulations on the well-deserved press for your contribution to the national discourse on access to care. And the new site design looks great!
Ross
P.S. Don’t let the next 3 1/2 years (+ X number of years in residency) drain you of your humanism. I’d hate to see you authoring an article like this in the future.
Graham,
Your cartoon is making the rounds — so exciting!! Just wanted to say congrats….nice to see that med school hasn’t sucked away your sense of humor!! :) Good job.
Rupal
this is a great video
I am sending a link to my congressman.
Everyone else should do the same