SAN FRANCISCO – More than 1,000 protesters converged outside the Moscone Convention Center on June 19 during the America’s Health Insurance Plans’ annual conference.
Demonstrators were advocating for a single-payer healthcare system and against private insurance profiteering.
Dan Hodges, chairman of Health Care for All California, one of the event’s organizers, said the current healthcare insurance system is bankrupting families and can’t control cost nor ensure quality.
Inside the convention center, keynote speakers were asked about their views on implementing a single-payer healthcare system.
William Frist, former U.S. Senator (R-Tenn.), said no presidential candidate supports such a system, whether it be Canadian or European style.
“You can reach equity without a single-payer system,” said John Breaux, former U.S. Senator (D-La.).
Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, stressed that a single-payer system would eliminate innovation, citing that 78 percent of new drugs introduced into the market are the result of free enterprise.
Hodges disagreed, noting that Germany and France’s big pharmaceutical companies produce new drugs. He said U.S. consumers are paying U.S. drug companies higher drug costs to subsidize U.S. drugs sold more cheaply in other countries.
“If everyone had insurance, money would be put into a national program to pay for durable medical goods and pharmaceuticals,” he said.
Frist emphasized that a single-payer program would drive healthcare costs even higher than they are today, but Hodges said a study conducted by The Lewin Group in 2001 at the behest of the California Health and Human Services Agency concluded that a single-payer system would reap the highest benefits for quality, coverage and cost control.
Hodges said the lack of coverage and ability to pay for services is creating an unnecessary debt for families, which makes the issue more urgent now than ever.