“Insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays don’t magically disappear during disasters. But the money to pay them has to compete with the need to rebuild our lives from scratch.”
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Opinion: Why Butte County needs Medicare-For-All more than ever
New Medicare-for-All legislation was just introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) I’m for it. Our nation has another, better, chance to fix our broken health insurance system.
As a retired Nurse Practitioner and a long-time Butte County resident, I strongly believe Medicare for All will give our communities the healthcare security that we desperately need. Here’s why.
Whether you’re a patient, a healthcare provider or a hospital, I don’t need to tell you the healthcare challenges we were facing before the fire just got a whole lot worse. You already know.
Photo Attribution: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Taylor A. Workman
Fifty thousand people have been displaced. Adventist Hospital, doctors’ and therapists’ offices, and clinics have been damaged or destroyed by fire. If you owned your business and lost it, you also lost your ability to pay for private insurance. If your employer was burned out, you lost your job and if your employer was sponsoring your health insurance, you lost that too.
Getting health care was a problem before the fire, but it’s even worse now. No matter whether you get insurance through work, Covered California or Medicare, the scarcity of primary care doctors was already a problem. If you’re on Medi-Cal, almost no physician would accept you as a patient. At the same time that the number of people who qualify for Medi-Cal will likely rise, the ability of doctors to hire staff and see those people will worsen.
That’s because many patients and their doctors lost their homes and businesses and had to move away to find shelter. The Butte County vacancy rate was already critical at around 2%. Then the fire took out an estimated 6.5% of the county’s housing units.
On top of that, our communities have been traumatized. Month-long waits or long drives to access mental health care were common before the fire. Today it’s worse.
Affording health care remains another big problem. Over 21% of Butte County households were living in poverty before the fire. But even at higher incomes, the costs of health insurance prevented 4 in 10 of us from seeking the care we need.
Now it’s worse. Insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays don’t magically disappear during disasters. But the money to pay them has to compete with the need to rebuild our lives from scratch.
Area hospitals, greatly impacted by the fire, are also disproportionately burdened by having to deal with multiple insurance companies and this adds a layer of completely unnecessary expense to our health care.
Medicare for All would make healthcare more affordable. Here’s how:
It would reduce the cost of billing.
Medicare for All would dramatically reduce the average $99,581 that physicians spend each year on billing and insurance-related work just to get paid. It would save hospitals millions of dollars on redundant and often competing billing administration, up to 25% to 30% of their budgets.
Reduced billing costs means savings for you and for a public insurance system.
It would finance health care in a completely different way.
A public Medicare-for-All system will eliminate upfront costs like premiums, deductibles and co-pays. A combination of taxes, based on one’s ability to pay, would ensure that everybody would pay their fair share for the same comprehensive policy. And universal coverage would ensure that the system would remain solvent and financially stable.
It would cost you less.
The savings from a more efficient healthcare system means that we would pay less in taxes than we are now paying in premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
We would all have the same comprehensive, high-quality health insurance no matter what circumstances change in our lives.
You could see the doctor of your choice, even if your doctor had to set up a new practice in another area or gave up private practice and took a job at a hospital.
When I moved to Butte County many years ago for work, the active arts community and beautiful environment attracted me. Life here should be peaceful and uncomplicated. When it comes to our health care, it’s anything but. It doesn’t have to be this way. Contact your congressional representatives and voice support for Jayapal’s new bill. At the same time, let your state legislators know that you also support California Medicare for All. We need it now, more than ever.
—Paul O’Rourke-Babb is a retired Nurse Practitioner and longtime member of Physicians for a National Health Program. He lives in Chico.
Banner Photo Attribution: Feather River, Butte County, California by Mrgooseskin at English Wikipedia
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