Single-payer health care affordable and effective

As the health care debate continues to get muddled by the politicians and mainstream media, the actual human element of the debate is lost. Everyday people - our friends, teachers, parents and neighbors - are struggling with the implications of our broken health care system. With 46 million Americans uninsured and 25 million underinsured, roughly a quarter of our population lacks adequate health coverage. Viruses and diseases don't check to see if you have health insurance. Swine flu doesn't care what your deductible is, and will spread from the uninsured to the wealthy without missing any paperwork. Unless we treat health as a community problem, we will continue to see disease and illness dominate our lives.

We are becoming accustomed to hearing stories about people our grandparents' age dealing with health care problems, but we rarely hear about the people our age who are having their lives torn apart trying to figure out how to pay for care they never expected they would need. I had a very personal situation come to my attention recently that made me realize just how serious this health care crisis is, and how vital it is that we institute a single-payer system in the U.S.

I recently found out a friend from high school has been diagnosed with lymphomic cancer at age 25. She comes from a middle-class white suburban upbringing and had a full time waitressing job that was responsible enough to provide her with health insurance. She, like many young people, picked the cheapest plan available with a high deductible. She never thought she could be diagnosed with a deadly illness like cancer at such a young age.

So when the diagnosis came in, she was understandably shocked. Despite having coverage, the cost of her care will far exceed both her coverage and her ability to pay for specialized treatment. She went from feeling secure in her finances to suddenly having no idea how she will be able to afford the treatments that could save her life.

She is caught in the same health care nightmare that millions of Americans face today. Her insurance is tied to her job. Because the debilitating side effects of her chemotherapy may cause her to be unable to work, she is caught in a catch-22. If she becomes too ill to work, her employment may be terminated, and thus her insurance as well.

Privately funding her own treatment is just too costly, and with the clock ticking away, the longer she waits the worse her health will be and the more costly her treatments will get. There is not much my friend can do other than acquire tremendous debt in order to live, and then spend the rest of her healthy life trying to avoid medical bankruptcy. This type of thing can happen to any one of us. Even if we are not diagnosed with cancer, we will be graduating soon. We will not be on our parents' plans or the UConn plan, and will be pushed into this system to fend for ourselves. For many of us, that means opting for no coverage.

This issue is certainly complex, but there at least one plausible solution. A single-payer system will cover everyone equally regardless of age, race or gender. In a single-payer system, one public entity will pay all of the health care providers, and we all pitch in to fund this payer. Like Social Security, this could be an efficient form of social insurance. Although many people claim "socialized" medicine will be too costly for us to afford, we already have a very successful semi-socialized medicine plan called Medicare. Medicare has a 3 percent overhead cost. Compare this to the 15 to 25 percent overhead accrued by private insurance companies who need to pay for marketing, hiring people to deny claims, and profit.

That's a difference of at least five to one. Medicare is at least five times less expensive than private insurance. In a single-payer system, minor tax increases would be more than offset by decreases in out-of-pocket expenses.

That's right, this system would actually be cheaper. It is clear that a practical solution would be to expand Medicare to every single American. This is a program that is already in place and will not need the creation of a whole new system. America has suffered long enough under the profiteering health insurance companies. Let's cut them out of the picture and extend Medicare to all.