In his recent column on health care (June 29), John McClaughry criticizes Vermont’s road map to universal health care as laid out in Act 48. This road map hopes to create a publicly financed health care system, in which health care is a guaranteed public good for all Vermonters The target date for implementation is 2017.
According to Mr. McClaughry, the recent VA scandals, in addition to evidence from Canada and other countries where health care is universal and publicly funded, shows that such systems will result in “rationing, wait lines, maddening bureaucracies, inefficient work rules, demoralized doctors and nurses, shabby facilities, obsolete technology, and declining quality of care.”
So, what is the actual evidence? According to the Commonwealth Fund’s 2014 report on 11 industrialized nations (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States), the United States ranked last on issues of access, efficiency, and equity. An interesting feature of this study is that it showed that even higher-income and insured Americans were often unable, as compared to those in other countries in similar positions, to get needed treatment. This may be due to the fact that even with insurance coverage, many Americans face high out-of-pocket costs.
Ironically, the United Kingdom ranked first in the recent Commonwealth Fund report. Their system is actually government owned and operated. However, we should be clear that Act 48 does not contemplate a government-owned health care system at all. Rather it proposes functioning much like our current Medicare system does, using publicly raised funds to pay providers, who remain in the private sector. (It is also important to point out that according to Act 48, the new publicly financed plan, Green Mountain Care, will function as a secondary payer or wraparound for those who are already on Medicare).
In any event, this recent data, and numerous other studies of comparative health care systems, leaves one wondering on what basis John McClaughry can assert that countries with publicly funded health care systems deliver worse care. He certainly cannot demonstrate that these systems are more expensive — as health care costs in the United States are the highest in the world. (According to the Fund’s report, we spend about twice as much per capita as the average for the comparison countries, and the same ratio holds true if one looks at health care spending as a percent of GDP). Over 60 percent of personal bankruptcies in the United States are due to health care expenses.
Finally, what about the issue of the VA? Independent surveys actually show that those who get into this system give high marks on the quality of care they receive. But gaining admittance is not easy. One has to prove that one’s ailment was a result of one’s military service. Furthermore, as Sen. Bernard Sanders has pointed out, more than 2 million more veterans are in need of care now, due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly, these numbers mean that more investment is needed to guarantee timely care for all these veterans. But how does this prove that publicly funded health care is inefficient? This recent scandal seems to say more about our propensity to engage in costly military adventures overseas, and then to forget that we have to care for veterans when they return home.
The fact is that 45,000 Americans in the private health care sector die each year because they were unable to receive the care they needed. Why is this not a scandal? It certainly should be, especially when we consider that every other country in the industrialized world has been able to provide health care to their citizens more effectively in terms of cost and quality through some kind of public financing and universal inclusion.
Act 48 was a breakthrough for Vermont, and we should support the road map to guaranteed publicly funded health care for all Vermonters that it laid out. The evidence has shown time and time again that public financing and guaranteed universal access are the most effective ways to create an efficient, cost-effective, high-quality health care system.
Ellen Oxfeld is a resident of Middlebury.