Senate Finance Committee Hearing on Expanding Health Care Coverage

"Roundtable Discussion on “Expanding Health Care Coverage”
May 5 , 2009, at 10:00 a.m., in 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Over at the PNHP Blog, Don McCanne points out that the voices for single payer are being stifled and excluded because of the view of most in the Congress that it is a politically unviable proposition, though he "respects" their views.

Even more problematic was an exchange later in the hearings between Sen. Pat Roberts and Scott Serota, CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Sen. Roberts told the tale of how a group of surgeons and anesthesiologists surrounded him after his knee surgery and told him and said they'd all quit if we went to a national health plan or even, I believe, to a public option and their reimbursements were to be decreased.

I don't have the transcript, but he went on to say something along the lines of how there was no way to control costs in a national health system and then asked Serota what he thought.

Of course, Serota explained in that patrician way of so many how there was no way in the world to produce high quality and lower costs than we have in the US now with private insurance.

Now, if Sen. Baucus doesn't want single payer advocates around because he doesn't think it is politically viable, that is one thing. But what he doesn't seem to realize is that having a knowledgeable single payer advocate and someone knowledgeable about international comparative health care in the room would have resulted in the particular line of BS that Roberts and Serota were peddling to be swatted down without breaking a sweat.

That is why it is so critical to have a broader range of views at the table. There was no one there willing to point out the obvious: Reducing future surgeons' income from $500 K to $400 K, for example, will not bring the world to a halt. Essentially every country in the world controls costs and maintains quality at massive savings compared to the disastrously inefficient US private insurance industry.

But there was no one at the table willing to tell them that.

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