Medicare consumes 3 percent of the dollar for administration whereas managed care companies utilize 10 to 30 percent of each health care dollar on marketing, paperwork, lobbying, excessive executive pay and shareholder profits. Because the single-payer method eliminates most administrative expenses, there should be money available to cover uninsured Americans. Single-payer health care puts every citizen in the same insurance pool under a single set of rules, which will drastically cut confusing rules for physicians and for patients. Under a single-payer system, administrators are able to use purchasing power with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of drugs. In Canada, the cost of U.S. manufactured drugs is approximately one-third less.
Opponents sometimes dismiss single-payer universal health care as socialized medicine.
But socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the facilities and employs the health care providers. In sharp contrast, a single-payer system uses the existing private and public health care delivery system and preserves private ownership. Patients would retain choice of their physicians and hospitals. We are convinced that most Americans, and most physicians, support health care reform based on precepts of social justice and medical need, not the current reforms driven by Wall Street. If other countries can provide universal health insurance for all citizens, surely the wealthiest nation in the world can do likewise.