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.
