The Amazing Maze of US Health Care » Single Payer in Maryland

Amazing seems a most appropriate word to describe the financing and delivery of health care services in the United States of America.
James L. McGee, CEBS--On Health Care Reform

Single Payer in Maryland

February 28th, 2009

A letter to Senator Thomas McLain (Mac) Middleton

Chairman, Senate Finance Committee

Maryland State Senate

In one way or another I have been associated with labor management benefit funds throughout my working career.  For years, the multiemployer funds were my model of how a health care system based on employment could work.

But I have become convinced that the health care system is broken at its core.

I understand that the Maryland State Senate will be considering SB 881 in committee hearings on Wednesday, March 4th.    I am asking you to join the effort to lead Maryland to a single payer solution to health care in Maryland and the nation.

Who should the system serve?

First,  I ask you to pay attention to who is complaining the loudest that the current system is broken.  It is patients and doctors.  If all of the other stakeholders aren’t facilitating patient access to care and physician delivery of care, then their role in the process needs to be reexamined.   A single payer approach begins a fundamental realignment of those roles.  It does not need to eliminate their roles.  It needs to make them secondary.

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