Responding to a budget preparation request from City Councilmember Kevin McKeown, Santa Monica’s Director of Finance has calculated that universal single-payer healthcare would save the city $6 million a year in employee health-benefit costs.
Mr. McKeown, a long-time advocate of universal single-payer healthcare, led the City Council to endorse both the California and federal single-payer bills currently under consideration.
Struggling with a Santa Monica budget short on revenues and long on rising costs, Mr. McKeown asked Finance Director Carol Swindell to quantify possible savings to city government if single-payer were enacted in California.
Ms. Swindell’s blockbuster response, delivered to the Council last Friday, quantifies the stunning potential savings to the public of a proposed health plan that removes insurance middlemen and administrative costs.
The single-payer system “would incur $21.8 million in annual expenditures,” wrote Ms. Swindell. “Projected medical costs for FY 2008-09 for the same salary level were $27.8 million, which indicates an estimated savings of $6 million over current medical, dental, and vision costs.”
Arriving at a Happy Conclusion
Santa Monica’s calculations used information from the California Legislative Analyst’s office, and were based on the provisions of California Senate Bill 810, which proposes a statewide universal single-payer healthcare system similar to the federal bill, HR 676 (U.S. Rep. John Conyers, DF-MI)).
Ms. Swindell points out that the switch from private to single-payer healthcare “would likely have no impact on city employees, given the city’s existing coverage.”
For many other local workers, though, including those lacking employer-paid health benefits, supporters maintain that universal single-payer would provide more complete coverage. Santa Monica, as reported in the city’s recently adopted “Creative Capital” policy plan, has an uncommonly high number of artists, writers and other creative workers who tend to freelance or work part-time, often leaving them underinsured for healthcare, if not completely unprotected.
Mr. McKeown was not surprised at the magnitude of the $6 million savings. “All along,” he said, “we have known that for-profit insurance inevitably adds massive administrative overhead to our current healthcare system.
Primary Goal: To Include Everyone
“Those $6 million could be going to schools, police, fire, social services, or parks instead of to corporate profits.”
Mr. McKeown feels the importance of extending full healthcare to everyone under a universal single-payer health plan is even more significant than the cost savings.
“In this recession, people losing jobs are also losing medical care, for themselves and their families,” Mr. McKeown says.
“We already have almost 50 million uninsured in the United States. And as recent concerns over swine flu illustrate, those without health care increase the epidemic risks for all of us.”
Mr. McKeown has worked with the California Nurses Assn., Progressive Democrats of America, Physicians for a National Health Program and other advocates for universal single-payer healthcare.
Last summer, at the Democratic National Convention, the Santa Monica City Councilman met with Congressman Conyers, principal author of HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act.
Waxman’s Old Role
U.S. Rep Henry Waxman (D-West L.A.) was at one time a co-author of HR 676, but it is now uncertain whether single-payer advocates will be at the table during hearings held by the House Mr. Energy and Commerce Committee, which Waxman chairs.
Mr. Conyers is outraged, saying, “Henry Waxman, my brilliant friend, open up your door.”
Mr. Conyers understands the politics of the situation, but “it’s another thing to say we don’t want to hear the most popular bill.”
Mr. Conyers went on to explain, “I’ve got 79 co-sponsors. Seventy-nine men and women saying let’s get this thing on. We’ve got 300 to 400 unions. We’ve had three polls. The American people have spoken.”
With Santa Monica already on the record endorsing both the state and national universal single-payer healthcare bills, and armed with the documentation of potential $6 million savings for the city alone, Mr. McKeown agrees:
“Healthcare reform is overdue,” he said. “Now is the time to restructure the system to make it truly work, not settle for inadequate half-measures.”
Mr. McKeown has asked Congressman Waxman’s office to schedule a face-to-face meeting with the Councilman and local doctors from the L.A. chapter of the California Physicians Alliance.
Despite widespread public support for universal single-payer healthcare, advocates assert that the political influence of insurance companies and the healthcare industry continue to suppress discussion at the highest policy-making levels.
“How are you going to have a transformational health care program, that has been vaunted and touted for so long, if you take the most popular remedy for it off the table to begin the negotiations?” asked Mr. Conyers.“You won’t get it.”
Mr. McKeown, like many others, remains committed to the full course of reforming healthcare with true universal single-payer. He said he is not banking on “just promises from insurance executives to reduce costs, or the wishy-washy so-called ‘public option’ that leaves intact the private insurance system with all its wasteful overhead.
“If you want to cure an infection, you prescribe the full course of penicillin – you don’t risk doing more harm than good with just half a dose,” Mr. McKeown says.
Looking hopefully at the $6 million in Santa Monica city healthcare costs that could be saved under single-payer, Mr. McKeown concludes that “this is our moment to create a new healthcare system that not only means better care for everyone, but frees funding for other worthy local purposes.
“We need to make sure we are heard in Washington. We want health care that works. We want our money to go to community needs, not corporate profits.”
Mr. McKeown may be contacted at kevin@mckeown.net.
Also http://www.mckeown.net “Choose to be conscious.”
