Two mayors have announced an effort to get the nation’s mayors to sign on to support Medicare for All.  Here is the story of the launch by Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia.

“Health care is a human right,” Garcia said in the release. “I’ve been supporting a single payer system in our state for many years because of the millions of people uninsured or underinsured. It’s time for Medicare for All.”

Garcia was joined by the Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf:

“The clearest lesson from the COVID-19 crisis is that healthcare must be a right for all — and not a path to bankruptcy and deeper racial disparities,” Schaaf said in the release. “We’re mobilizing local leaders to build a national movement so the next Congress will adopt legislation that brings healthcare access to all.”

It would be meaningful if some Kentucky mayors would sign on to this.  Please ask your mayor to join in this effort.

The website where mayors can sign on is here:  https://mayors4medicare.com/

Remarks at Virtual Presentation (ZOOM) to Secretary Eric Friedlander, Carrie Banahan, and Jacquelyne Richardson on Aug. 25, 2020

Garrett Adams, M.D., M.P.H.

• We are proud of your leadership in the pandemic. Thank you.
• Your recent comments regarding the disproportionate rates of cases and the effects of Covid-19 on Black and Brown Kentuckians again reflect your wisdom, your humanity and concern for others.

You said:

“My commitment today is … to begin an effort to cover 100 percent of individuals in our … African American communities, everybody…We are going to be putting dollars behind it and we’re going to have a multi-faceted campaign to do it… it’s important because COVID-19 has shown what can happen when you don’t have coverage…This is just a first commitment and making up for that inequality that Dr. King said was the most severe, inequality in health care…I want to eventually make sure there’s coverage for everybody out there, but this is the time and this is our commitment and we’re going to make it happen.” NPR.org 6/9/20.

We honor your commitment and we’re here today to help us move forward together to achieve that goal. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you and to open this dialog. We believe the only way to accomplish your vision of 100% health insurance coverage of individuals in … African-American communities is with a single payer national health insurance plan.

I have often thought about the similarity between your daily Covid-19 encouragement to Kentuckians, “We’ll get through this. We’ll get through this together.” and the Single Payer mantra, which is, “Everybody in, Nobody out.”

Seventeen years ago this month, at my desk at the Louisville Jefferson County Metro Health Department I read an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, entitled, The Physician’s Proposal for a National Health Plan. Here is an abbreviated version of the proposal.

A Physicians’ Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform

1. The plan removes all financial barriers to medical care.

2. Saves enough on administrative overhead to provide comprehensive coverage to the uninsured and to upgrade coverage for everyone else, thus requiring no increase in total health spending.

3. Puts in place effective mechanisms to control costs, lowering the rate of medical inflation and making the health system sustainable for future generations.

4. Restores free choice of clinician and hospital to all Americans.

5. Every resident of the U.S., including all immigrants, is covered for all necessary medical care.

6. National Health Program (NHP) card entitles patients to care at any hospital or doctor’s office.

7. Provides coverage for outpatient and inpatient medical care as well as rehabilitation, mental health and long-term care, dental services, and prescription drugs.

8. Improves on traditional Medicare’s benefits and expands coverage to all Americans.

9. Eliminates premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance.

10. Is federally financed (like Medicare) and administered by federal, state and regional boards. Private insurance that duplicates NHP coverage is prohibited.

11. The Initial increase in government costs is fully offset by savings in premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

12. Hospitals and other health facilities will be on a budget. Most remain privately owned and operated, receiving an annual “global” lump sum budget from the NHP to cover all operating costs.

13. Physicians are paid based on a simple fee schedule covering all patients or by salary

14. Medications purchased wholesale.

15. It is paid for by combining current government health spending into a single fund with modest new progressive taxes fully offset by reductions in premiums and out-of-pocket spending

(www.pnhp.org – Am. J. Public Health, June, 2018)

At the end of the article there was an online option to endorse the plan and join PNHP, a data-driven organization of physicians and health professionals who educate and advocate for Single Payer national health insurance. I joined 8,000 fellow physicians. Today there are 23,000 and the majority of American doctors support Single Payer as well as leading physician specialty organizations.

Recently the AMA cut ties with an anti-single payer lobbying group as did the American College of Radiology.

In January the nation’s largest medical specialty society, the American College of Physicians (ACP), announced its endorsement of Medicare for All. On Aug. 12, 2020 the Society of General Internal Medicine officially endorsed that support and committed to advocate for universal health care coverage.

The majority of Americans favor Medicare for All. Although there are no specific Kentucky polls, evidence is building that Kentuckians favor the reform: City Council resolutions, and Democratic Club endorsements, a Resolution in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2007. Recently two Kentucky candidates for US Senate ran on single payer platforms. One of the candidates was endorsed by both leading newspapers in the state and came close to winning the Primary.

Single Payer is the only plan that will cut through the wasteful bureaucracy of our current system and actually provide health care for all. A single payer health plan will do exactly what you want it to do. It will level the playing field for all Kentuckians and put us on the road to equality and dignity for all. We are hoping that you and your administration will commit to a period of study and hopefully, support of a national single payer health care plan.

Health Care advocates challenge Governor Beshear to make good on his promise to cover his Black constituents and all Kentuckians and to endorse the only proposal that will make that happen–Improved Medicare for All.

The KSPH letter is below.

___________________

Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care

An affiliate of the Kentucky chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program

P. O. Box 17595, Louisville, KY 40217, www.kyhealthcare.org, (502) 636 1551

July 10, 2020

Governor Andy Beshear

700 Capitol Avenue, Suite 100

Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

Dear Governor Beshear,

We join our fellow Kentuckians in praising your strong and wise leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst natural crisis most of us will ever see. We applaud your science-based actions and your sincere compassion for the people of the Commonwealth. Thank you!

Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare is a nonpartisan grassroots organization with a statewide following. We are affiliated with Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP.org) and share their mission to educate and advocate for single payer national health insurance—Improved Medicare for All.

Recently, shocked by the horrifying rate at which Black Kentuckians are dying from COVID-19, you committed publicly to covering every single African American and, furthermore, every Kentuckian. We are profoundly moved by your courageous commitment, and we welcome this initiative wholeheartedly. Yes, it must be done. There can be no excuse for our wealthy country, with its vast medical and professional resources, to leave anyone without high quality care.

We are grateful that you opposed the ill-advised Medicaid waiver proposals of your predecessor. Expansion of publicly-funded Medicaid was the major achievement of the ACA in Kentucky, but thousands still lacked coverage. Many fall into the gap with income too high for Medicaid yet too low to buy private plans or afford their deductibles and copays.  In 2018 Kentucky still had 7% of the non-elderly uninsured—a total of 238,400, close to a quarter of a million people, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Today, as you well know, we are in crisis. With the arrival of the pandemic, the rising unemployment rate plays havoc with employment-based health insurance. Over 900,000 Kentuckians could lose their employer-based health coverage due to layoffs and furloughs. Many of these individuals may never be called back to their old jobs, which will create an enormous lack of health coverage in Kentucky. There is no way that the ACA can begin to meet the challenge with the newly unemployed numbers at over 40 million nationwide and a pandemic raging. Prior to the layoffs of 2020, there remained over 27 million uninsured, and nearly 62 million underinsured individuals in this country. We already have distressing health care outcomes lagging behind other wealthy countries in maternal mortality, life expectancy, and infant mortality, to name but a few. As coverage grew under the ACA, so did underinsurance—the number of people nominally covered who still could not afford their care.

We believe it is essential to look to a more far-reaching and cost-effective solution to covering all our people and eliminating health disparities. The solution is Improved Medicare for All, a publicly-funded single payer plan. The current state of healthcare in the midst of Covid-19 cries out for a low-cost, universal expansion of coverage that only a Medicare for All plan can provide, a truly best-case solution to insure that everyone receives equal and unparalleled access to the best medical care available. There will be no distinction in coverage based on race, ethnicity, health status, or ability to pay. All necessary medical procedures, hospitalization, dental, eye care, hearing aids, mental health, prescriptions, and long-term care would be available to all. To remove all financial barriers to care, there will be no copays and no deductibles. And the cost for better than 95% of our citizens would be significantly lowered.

Our nation’s health care system is structured to be dependent upon private health insurers and profits, making it the most expensive system in the world, yet millions are still deprived of coverage and care. About a third of the nearly $4 trillion per year that our country spends goes, unnecessarily, to administrative costs. We call for universal coverage that does not depend on private health insurance companies whose overhead and profit consume over 30% of total health care costs and will eventually bankrupt our healthcare system.

To accomplish the goals you have so courageously expressed, to which you are committed, will require national single payer legislation, an improved Medicare for All system as set forth in the proposal of the Physicians for a National Health Program.^* We urge you to publicly endorse that proposal. You will have a world of impact in advancing your goals if you call on Kentucky’s congressional representatives to pass such legislation. Your endorsement can move the whole nation forward.

There is momentum now for a permanent solution to the ongoing health care crisis in our state and in our nation. Polls show majority support Medicare for All. In the recent Kentucky Democratic Primary senatorial election, the combined vote totals for the two candidates who supported Medicare for All were greater than the candidate who did not. In 2007, the Kentucky House of Representatives passed House Resolution No. 81, urging the US Congress to enact H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act.

Improved Medicare for All is the solution to solving this moral issue.

We would be pleased to provide more information on the advantages of Improved Medicare for All, either by teleconference or, hopefully soon, a face to face meeting. Please consider our request on behalf of the people of the Commonwealth. We look forward to future discussion, to answering your questions.

And again, thank you for your continued efforts tackling the heartrending problem plaguing the most vulnerable in our State.

Sincerely yours,

Garrett Adams, MD, MPH

Past President

Physicians for a National Health Program

Kay Tillow

Chair

Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care

Edgar Lopez, MD, FACS, Vice Chair

Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care

Harriette Seiler, Secretary

Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care

Charles Casper, Treasurer

Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care

*   https://pnhp.org/what-is-single-payer/physicians-proposal/supplemental-materials-2/

cc:  local and national news media

Single Payer Radio Shows.  Link

Wed. July 29, 2020, at 2PM;  Thur. July 30 at 11AM;  Fri. July 31 at 1PM

3.  Dr. Eugene Shively, Dr. Mike Flynn, Mark McKinley, and Kay Tillow discuss “Where does the money go in our health care system?”:

Wed. Aug. 12 at 2PM;  Thur., Aug. 13 at 11AM;  Fri. Aug. 14 at 1PM  Link

4.  Dr. Eugene Shively, Dr. Mike Flynn, Mark McKinley, and Dr. Jesse Wright discuss mental health and health care reform.  Wed. Aug. 26 at 2PM;  Thur., Aug. 27 at 11AM;  Fri. Aug. 28 at 1PM  Link

B.  Dr. Mike Flynn and Dr. Eugene Shively discuss the Covid 19 virus in an interview by Mark McKinley.  Aired May 27-29, 2020.  It is archived at this link.

It’s time for Medicare for All

If the coronavirus could speak, it would thank America for its warm welcome. It would be delighted by the abundance of available hosts, such as factory workers who couldn’t afford to stay home, people in prison for whom social distancing was impossible, and health care workers who weren’t provided sufficient protective equipment. It would mock us for significantly outpacing the rest of the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths despite spending the most per capita on health care.

America’s fractured health system has enabled the coronavirus to thrive. Millions of Americans, particularly Americans of color, lack health insurance or otherwise can’t access care.

When I become a physician next year, I aspire to provide excellent medical care to everyone, without exception. The only way America can successfully defeat COVID-19 (and adequately respond to future health crises) is through enacting comprehensive, lifelong health coverage for everybody.

Unprecedented moments call for unprecedented actions: It’s time for Medicare for All.

Jerome Soldo

Louisville, 40217

In the Courier-Journal 5-12-2020

Closing of rural hospitals

How tragic that 18 of Kentucky’s 45 rural hospitals are in danger of closing, and the president of the rural hospital association says that’s a conservative estimate. How can we let this happen? These hospitals mean life-or-death access to care – or not – for millions of Kentuckians.

Since the late ‘80s, Physicians for a National Health Program has proposed a national single-payer system that would assure funding of every hospital through global budgeting. Hospitals’ income would be stable and predictable. Bureaucracy geared to billing, profits and bill collection would be eliminated. Responsiveness to the needs of the community and quality of care would replace financial performance as the criteria for judging the value of a hospital. Every hospital that serves a community would have the funds to care for its patients.

The World Health Organization has ranked U.S. health system performance as 37th despite having the wealth to be the best. The majority of us are for this improved Medicare for All, single-payer system. We must insist that the legislation that would make it real be passed.

Kay Tillow

Louisville, 40208

Printed in the Courier-Journal on April 28, 2020

Dr. Barbara Casper, a Louisville internist, shares her concerns about our current profit driven healthcare system and the harm it causes for patients and providers.  She is interviewed by her husband Charlie Casper who is a member of the steering committee of Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care.

This episode of Single Payer Radio will air on 106.5 FM on Wednesday May 13 at 2pm with repeat broadcasts on Thursday May 14 at 11am and Friday May 15 at 1pm – the Forward Radio Community Access hours for the 2nd week in May.

Single Payer Radio is a project of Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare and Physicians for a National Health Plan, Kentucky. We are proud to be a community partner with Forward Radio. kyhealthcare.org

You can subscribe to our podcasts and please join the Forward Radio Community at forwardradio.org

You can listen to this program at the link below.

https://soundcloud.com/wfmp-forward-radio/single-payer-radio-charlie-casper-discusses-with-dr-barbara-casper-issues-dr-casper-encounters-in-her-practice

Single Payer Radio is back on the air!  The show, sponsored by Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care, will be broadcast on Forward Radio 106.5 FM and live streamed the 4th week of each month:

If you can’t pick it up on your radio, you can listen on line.  Go to forwardradio.org and tap “Listen live.”

The April program on profit driven healthcare is archived here.

Michael Flynn, MD, a retired surgical oncologist, has an article in the March 2020 edition of Louisville Medicine, the publication of the Greater Louisville Medical Society.  The article is on page 31 and can be accessed from this link:

https://view.joomag.com/louisville-medicine-volume-67-issue-10/0707749001583327866?short

Courier-Journal

March 3, 2020

We can provide health care for all

Would you rather have your life and death medical decisions made by a “nameless bureaucrat” or in a boardroom in New York city?   Having worked for many years for our government, I can assure you that the vast majority of government workers are motivated by the desire to do a good job and to provide a decent living for their family.  They are not motivated by the need to siphon off millions of dollars from the healthcare industry to enrich their fellow board members and stockholders.  These “nameless bureaucrats” do indeed have names and are responsible hard-working people trying to help with the mission their agency has been assigned.  They are held accountable when they make mistakes and not given a golden parachute to go away.  If all of our government workers and politicians are just lazy crooks, just what makes our country so great?

The insurance companies do not add any value to our health care.  We can get along just fine without them.  Our own Medicare, Medicaid and VA have proven this.  Look at all of the other industrialized countries in the world that do just fine with government-run health care systems.  If these other countries can afford to provide healthcare to all of its citizens, then surely the wealthiest country to have ever existed could also.

Gary Hagan, Shepherdsville, KY 40165

_______________

Letter writer wrong about “Medicare for all”

I respectfully disagree with the views expressed by E. W. Hoelscher in his letter published in The Courier Journal’s Community Forum.  In opposing Sen. Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, it appears Mr. Hoelscher was confusing Bernie’s plan with the British National Health System (NHS), where doctors and hospital workers are employed by the government.  The NHS is a true socialist system.  Under Bernie’s proposal, physicians would not work for the government.  They would operate their own practices, and their fees for service would be reimbursed and processed through the government—as is now the case for traditional Medicare.  Nor would hospitals be expropriated; they would operate as they do now but be paid through the single-payer financing system, rather than by way of costly middlemen.  It is true that “Bernie and friends” oppose the private insurance companies who pay their CEOs outrageous salaries and add billions to the costs of U. S. health care.

Harriette Seiler, Louisville, 40207

______________

Courier-Journal Letter

March 11, 2020

Distortions about single-payer healthcare

Not surprising, the single-payer, Medicare for All alternative to our current healthcare mess is being heaped with distortions and outright false information.  Witness two recent letters to the editor in The Courier Journal.

One writer says businesses will be the big winner with Medicare for All.  Partially correct.  They will definitely save money, but they will pay their fair share, just like employees.  Eliminate premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and workers are the big winners, not employers.

The second writer claims the federal government will expropriate all hospitals and clinics if Medicare for All is adopted, and everyone will be working for the government.  Not true.  Hospitals and clinics would continue to be privately owned and operated.  No different than the current Medicare program.

When the profit and overhead of insurance companies and hospitals amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars, and drug prices will be lowered due to negotiation, the savings are huge under Medicare for All.  Savings will go to patient care and everyone will be covered.

And rest assured, Medicare for All will be sustainable long term, since Congress will be included in the plan, just like each of us, a sure-fire way to make sure funding is preserved.

Charlie Casper, Louisville, 40207