The Social Medicine Portal

As in education, so in health care: What does a good college lending system and single-payer healthcare have in common?

Well, a lot, even if the New York Times doesn’t seem to find my case compelling when I developed it in a letter to the editor, so I never heard back from them (yes, it was under 150 words!). Interestingly, the Times really gets it when it comes to education, as indicated by its excellent editorial (“Helping Students, Not Lenders“) calling for substituting a “wasteful” and “corrupt” student loans system that has turned out to be a windfall to private lenders, yet of little help to students. And yet, the editors just cannot bring themselves to see the parallel between education and health care, both of them arguably social 0r public goods (even if they do not exactly fit the technical definition, whereby consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others).

So when it comes to a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system – single payer – they consistently dismiss it as “politically unfeasible”, when not ignore it altogether.  Indeed, in a recent detailed account of Hillary Clinton’s past experiences with health care reform (“Obama Taps Clinton Ideas But Not Clinton Herself“) , New York Times reporters quote former health secretary Donna Shalala as saying that “we’ve learned…that people don’t want to lose the health insurance they currently have”. Which leaves a reader who reads no other sources thinking that Clinton’s views on health care have matured, and have a shot, because, as she asserted during the elections, “under my plan those who like their health insurance can keep it”. No matter that under systems favored by Clinton (or by President Obama), where the private insurance sector plays a key role, the likelihood that the insurance plan you have today, and presumably like, will still be there — or assuming it is, that you’ll be able to  afford it — is rather slim.

New York Times‘ reporters also praised President Obama’s performance during a major health care forum held this past Thursday (“Obama Says He Is Open To Altering Health Plans“) for having “bluntly warned lobbyists and special interests” that nobody would stand in the way of major reform, while forgetting to mention that the White House initially refused to invite any single payer advocate to the forum, only relenting by including two guests (out of a list of 120) after huge public pressure.

In the spirit of filling the void left by the New York Times in its failure to notice the implications of its views on education for health care, here goes my letter, which I hope readers of the Social Medicine Portal will find more persuasive that the Times‘ editors have.

To the editors: Helping Students, not Lenders, Wednesday, March 4, 2009

So the Times’ editors get it: the point of a college lending system is to help students, not lenders. Thus eliminating the middle-men who reap enormous profits on students’ and taxpayers’ backs is the wise and right thing to do. Let government do the lending directly and let students freely choose whatever college they please.

As in education, so in health care: the point of a health care system is…you guessed it! To provide health care! Let us then eliminate the waste and corruption of a private insurance sector that has failed to deliver the goods for decades. Let us all contribute a predictable proportion of our income into a single risk pool, and let us have our government use the pool’s huge purchasing power to buy health care for all. And let patients freely choose the doctors or hospitals they like. Let us have single payer. It is about time.