Nader pushes single-payer health care in CU talk

[Guest guest]

Nader pushes single-payer health care in CU talk

4/24/2009 By Haugh, THE COLORADO STATESMAN

Consumer activist and corporate gadfly Ralph Nader urged adoption of a

single-payer system of delivering health care to Americans last week when he

spoke to an overflow audience in a club room at the University of Colorado's

football stadium.

Since universal health coverage was first proposed by President Harry Truman,

Nader said, more than a million people have died needlessly because they

couldn't afford health insurance.

" Eighteen thousand people die every year in this country because they can't

afford health insurance. Never mind health care — they can't afford health

insurance, " Nader said. " That's more than six 9/11s every year. "

Nader spoke April 16 as part of a class being taught by Hank Brown, former U.S.

senator and congressman from Colorado and former CU president. Brown's course,

" The Politics of Health Care Reform, " began early this year and has featured

lectures by health care policy experts with varying experiences and viewpoints.

Topics have ranged all over the board, including financing for federal health

programs, the role of private insurance, biomedical ethics, the Canadian health

care system and the debate over national health insurance.

Nader advocated a health care system that guarantees coverage and treatment to

every person, paid for

and administered by the federal government. He said such a system would promote

improved quality of

care and provide coverage for the nearly 50 million uninsured in the United

States.

A single-payer system also would reduce administrative inefficiency created by

the need for the nation's providers to conduct business with more than 1,500

insurance companies. He estimated that $225 billion to $250 billion each year is

wasted through inefficiency and fraud in medical billing.

" That's a big figure, even by AIG-executive standards, " he said.

Nader called for community-based health clinics to provide primary care, staffed

by employed doctors and directed by boards of trustees composed of lay people

from the community. Large regional hospitals with specialist physicians would be

organized to treat complex medical conditions.

" With a single-payer system — everybody in, nobody out — you don't have to spend

a lot of time figuring

out who's in and who's out, " Nader said.

Compared with other industrialized countries of the world, Nader said, the

United States is doing a poor job of taking care of its citizens, and that needs

to change before more people die needlessly.

" No one in Canada, Luxembourg, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland or Italy

dies because they can't afford health insurance, " he said. " They're insured from

the moment they're born. "

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