Single-minded on healthcare - Dr. Steffie Woolhandler

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/06/22/harvards_dr_steffie_woolhandler_is_single_minded_about_healthcare/

"The debate in Washington about how to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system has included little from advocates for a single-payer plan. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Cambridge Health Alliance internist and Harvard Medical School professor who cofounded Physicians for a National Health Care Program, has been raising her voice for a national plan for more than two decades, contending that the current system based on private insurance - including the Massachusetts model mandating near-universal coverage - does not serve people well, whether they are rich or poor, insured or uninsured. Here is an edited version of an interview last week.

Q. What do you think of current efforts in Washington to improve healthcare?

A. What’s currently on the table, what Obama and Kennedy are talking about, will not fix healthcare. They don’t have any way to pay for it. We can’t just keep pumping money into the system. We actually have to fix the system.

...

Q. How would a single-payer system pay for itself?

A. A single-payer system contains its own funding. It would fix the system by dramatically reducing administrative costs. Just the complexity of having competing insurance firms and the system overhead make costs go way up. In the United States, administration costs us 31 cents of every healthcare dollar. In Canada, it’s about 16.5 cents for every healthcare dollar. If we could have the administrative efficiency they have in Canada, we could move $400 billion in annual costs.

Q. What about waiting lists for care?

A. Canada spends half of what we do per capita on healthcare and they do have some waiting lists, but they’re really not as bad as the right wing portrays them. The waiting lists are a result of their level of spending. Our problem in the US is we spend a lot of money but we have a bad system. In Canada they have a good system but they just don’t spend enough money on it. We have great hospitals and great nurses and well-trained doctors and lots of fancy technology. We have what we need, and yet we still can’t take care of patients because the financing system doesn’t work."

[Cleita]

1. I love Dr.Steffie. I have since before George The Lizard was President.

She probably might be arrested today for voicing her opinions like most of us will be soon.

[slipslidingaway]

2. Thanks, still speaking out after a couple of decades...

just adding a bit more on her background.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_335.html

"After several years of working in the movement against the Vietnam War, I sought a career that would allow me to continue my work for social change. I also loved math and science. Medicine was a career that allowed me to combine both my interests.



Dr. Stephanie J. Woolhandler advocates guaranteed access to health care for all members of society, including the forty-two million Americans currently without medical insurance. In 1986 she helped found Physicians for a National Health Program, a not-for-profit organization for physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals who advocate a national health insurance program.


On the Harvard faculty since 1987, Dr. Woolhandler has conducted research and published her results in dozens of articles, chapters, and books, including Bleeding the Patient:The Consequences of Corporate Health Care, published in 2000. Studying the inequalities in health and health care, administrative costs in medicine, and national health insurance, she promotes a national health program with a single payer system. Towards that end, she helped found Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) in 1986, a not-for-profit organization of physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals who support a national health insurance program. Since that time, PNHP has flourished and now numbers about ten thousand physicians who support national non-profit health insurance..."

[Beartracks]

3. Where can we find the full interview? n/t

[slipslidingaway]

4. Not sure, but here is another longer interview...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=more_than_a_prayer_for_single_payer

"The notion of a Canadian-style "single-payer" health system -- essentially, replacing costly private insurers with a government body or bodies to pay for healthcare -- has long been dismissed by elite politicians and pundits. But the popular response to Michael Moore's new documentary "Sicko" is adding fuel to an already-smoldering fire of resentment over the domination of the current health system by for-profit insurers, in addition to that system's high cost (double any other nation's) and poor performance (37th overall in quality, according to the World Health Organization).


Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, with her partner, Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Both are practicing physicians as well as professors at Harvard Medical School. They have written widely on issues of health care reform, including the book Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate Health Care (with Dr. Ida Hellander). A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Dr. Woolhandler earned her medical degree at the LSU-New Orleans Medical School.

As the debate over American healthcare heats up in anticipation of the 2008 presidential race (in which health reform is widely expected to be one of the central issues), Dr. Woolhandler reflects on the flawed U.S. health system, various reform proposals, and the prospects of enacting a system in the single-payer mold..."