DN Interviews Dr. Quentin Young, friend of President Obama, on Health Care
speech
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/10/obama_urges_lawmakers_to_pass_healthcare
AMY GOODMAN: With us from Chicago, Dr. Quentin Young, the national
coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. Young,
longtime friend of Barack Obama, former doctor for Dr. Martin Luther King
when he lived in Chicago.
President Obama intensified his push for healthcare reform Wednesday with a
nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress. Obama urged
lawmakers to overcome partisan differences and pass long-awaited changes to
the nation's healthcare system. But what would reform actually look like?
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dr. Quentin Young in Chicago, national coordinator for
Physicians for a National Health Program, your response to the President's
speech?
DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: He gets an A-plus for diagnosis. He gets a D-minus for
treatment. As he said himself, this public option, which is the line in the
sand, is a false dichotomy. Perhaps five percent of the potential users
would be in it. That leaves 95 percent out. It has already been emphasized,
the problem with the American health system is crystal clear: it's the
private insurance companies. And if the Obama proposal is as I heard it,
actually enhances the insurance presence, all these 45 million uninsured
will be held up, with the government and other kinds of subsidies, to go
into the private insurance market and all that that implies, with denial of
care, pre-existing disease exclusions. We know the terrible pitfall we're in
now. And the answer continues to be clear-cut, like Medicare is: single
payer for all.
And the good news is that there's going to be a chance for the Congress to
express itself in the House. Speaker Pelosi has assured Anthony Weiner, a
Republic--pardon me, a Democrat from Brooklyn, that his motion to substitute
single payer for the administration's bill will come to a vote. And this
period, that Reverend Jackson just identified, of public expression is
precisely the time to let our Congress people know we don't want them to be
bought and sold by the insurance lobby, we want them to vote for single
payer, so we can join the rest of the world of democratic industrial
countries and have healthcare for all the people and end this nightmare of
denial and bankruptcy and suffering. That's the issue, as far as I see it.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Young, President Obama mentioned the proposal to create a
single-payer system only once during his speech. He dismissed it as a
possible way to reform the healthcare system. Let's take a listen to what
Obama said first, and then we'll get your comment.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There are those on the left who believe that the
only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's,
where we would-where we would severely restrict the private insurance market
and have the government provide coverage for everybody. On the right, there
are those who argue that we should end employer-based systems and leave
individuals to buy health insurance on their own.
I've said-I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both these
approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would
disrupt the healthcare most people currently have. Since healthcare
represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build
on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new
system from scratch.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Quentin Young?
DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: It's a fallacious argument. We have Medicare, which is a
highly prized benefit to seniors and people who are disabled. It was
installed in one year without any problem at all, and it's the most popular
insurance program in the nation. And it has to be said, three or four years
ago, Obama himself, on the record, said single payer is the best solution.
He did qualify it by saying, if he were starting from scratch, he would go
with single payer. Well, we're worse than scratch, we're minus-scratch. And
the American people can't tolerate, our economy can't tolerate, the excesses
going on now.
He's essentially proposing to put some 45 million people in play for the
private insurance companies, and we've had fifty years' experience with
them. They've had their chance. And I find really discouraging his point
that it would be disruptive to change the system to a single-payer
arrangement. I think that that doesn't jibe with anything we know about
healthcare finance. And time is running out. I think our economy-he said
this-can't tolerate the excessive costs imposed by the private insurance
schemes.
And finally, he came out for mandates, which he opposed during his election
campaign. Mandates, in plain talk, is a nice word for compulsory insurance.
People will be required, unless they're very poor, to fork up the money to
get insurance. The 45 million people-
AMY GOODMAN: Like you need insurance for cars.
DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Yes. The 45 million without insurance aren't that way
because they like it; they don't have the money. And we have the money in
place. This has to be said, Amy. The American system spends twice as much
per capita as any other system. The money is there. The work force is there.
The hospitals are there. The only thing missing is that we have a private
insurance scheme that's maddening.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. Young, what about the issue that the-some Republicans
raise, that with a public option, many employers, especially small
employers, would remove the health insurance they now have, get rid of it,
and basically push their employees into a publicly run portion of the system
and be willing to pay a fee or tax to the government just to be done with
having to provide health insurance? Your response to that?
DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, they may be right. It's another way of saying how
rotten the private insurance system is. I think that-I'm not a fan of public
option. I recognize its symbolic place, that it's being the line in the
sand, as they say, and therefore it's going to mean a lot if it gets thrown
out. And I painfully note that Obama has shifted away from public option,
saying he's for it, but he's looking for other alternatives. That's a very
bad way to conduct a struggle of this magnitude. If you tried these kinds of
models on, say, civil rights or slavery, you'd come up very sad, if you
compromise all the way. No, I don't see the Republican observation that
people would pick the public option as anything other than saying how bad
private insurance is.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. Young, I'd also like to ask you about the cost of
President Obama's proposal. He basically said that it would cost no
additional moneys to the American people, that it would basically be
financed by reductions of cost and new taxes on insurance companies,
especially those who offer gold-plated insurance policies to others, taxing
those. Your sense of the economics of the proposal?
DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, that's our strongest point, of course. The
President said more than that. He said if it exceeds the budget, he will
reduce benefits. He made that pledge. Well, that's not necessary with single
payer. If we enacted single payer in this Congress, within a year we'd have
$400 billion of the excess administrative costs, the 32 to 33 percent of
administrative costs, and of course huge salaries to the executives, and of
course the huge amount of money spent in advertising, which helps nobody's
health. So, the benefits from single payer are never more clear than when
you talk about the economics. And the President knows this, and that's why
I'm
so uncomfortable when he talks about it being disruptive to go to a system
that would rescue the healthcare of the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to how President Obama ended his speech, talking
about the late Senator Edward Kennedy's hope for Congress to finally pass
healthcare reform.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we
do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More
businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are
sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result. We know these
things to be true.
That is why we cannot fail, because there are too many Americans counting
on us to succeed, the ones who suffer silently and the ones who share their
stories with us at town halls, in emails and in letters.
I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved
friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly
after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be
delivered upon his death.
In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to
the love and support of family and friends, his wife Vicki, his amazing
children, who are all here tonight. And he expressed confidence that this
would be the year that healthcare reform, that great unfinished business of
our society, he called it, would finally pass.
He repeated the truth that healthcare is decisive for our future
prosperity, but he also reminded me that it concerns more than material
things. What we face, he wrote, is above all a moral issue. At stake are not
just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and
the character of our country. [.]
Ted Kennedy's passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own
experience. It was the experience of having two children stricken with
cancer. He never forgot the sheer terror and helplessness that any parent
feels when a child is badly sick. And he was able to imagine what it must be
like for those without insurance, what it would be like to have to say to a
wife or a child or an aging parent, "There is something that could make you
better, but I just can't afford it."
That large-heartedness, that concern and regard for the plight of others,
is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling.
It, too, is part of the American character-our ability to stand in other
people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, that when
fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a
belief that in this country hard work and responsibility should be rewarded
by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that
sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama concluding his rare address to the joint
session of Congress on healthcare.
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