More than 1,000 protesters calling for a single-payer healthcare system converged Thursday outside the Moscone Convention Center, where the America's Health Insurance Plans annual conference is being held.
Demonstrators were advocating for a single-payer healthcare system and against private insurance profiteering.
Representatives of various groups, including the California Nurses Association and Physicians for a National Health Program, showed support for California State Sen. Sheila Kuehl's (D-Santa Monica) SB840, the California Universal Healthcare Act, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which calls for the creation of a publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare program modeled on the Medicare program but covering all U.S. residents.
Dan Hodges, chairman of Health Care for All California, one of the event's organizers, said the existng healthcare insurance system is bankrupting families and can't control cost nor ensure quality.
Inside the convention center keynote speakers said a single-payer system would not be feasible.
No presidential candidate today supports such a system, whether it be Canadian or European style, said former Senate Majority Leader William Frist, a Republican from Tennessee.
"You can reach equity without a single-payer system," said John Breaux, a 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 that 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 it is today, but Hodges said that a study conducted by The Lewin Group in the fall of 2001 for the California Health and Human Services Agency concluded that a single-payer system would reap the highest benefits for quality, coverage and cost control.
The Lewin Group analyzed and compared the cost and coverage impacts of nine health coverage proposals, and AZA Consulting analyzed the quality and access impacts of the proposals.
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.
One physician attending the conference said he supported universal healthcare coverage, noting that it was a shame that an industrialized nation did not provide healthcare coverage for all its citizens.