Let’S All Pay Equally For Health Care

Eight out of 10 Spokane business and professional people would probably vote for universal health care in Washington if they had it adequately explained to them.

That’s not based on any scientific survey.

It’s based on a talk I gave Wednesday to the Northwest Kiwanis Club.

My topic was an effort under way to place a citizens initiative on the November 2000 ballot that, if passed, would establish a single-payer system of universal health care coverage in this state.

Organizers of the movement also are trying to get a hearing in the state Legislature on a bill presently in the hopper to establish universal coverage.

Both of these measures envision the adoption of a single-payer system funded by a 1 percent income tax to be used strictly for health care - nothing else.

Big business most likely would continue to be against universal coverage. Big business has a vested interest in preserving the status quo, which allows big business an enormous competitive advantage over small business in terms of buying power, the opportunity to self insure and the ability to capitalize on economies of scale. Why give that up without a fight?

But if universal health care were to be funded by an across-the-board tax on everybody instead of asking small businesses to shoulder an inordinate share of the load as we do now, wouldn’t that take an enormous burden off the back of small business?

It certainly seems so to me, and that’s the argument I presented to the Northwest Kiwanis, which is mostly made up of small-business owners and executives and professionals.

Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall of Seattle heads up Health Care 2000, the organization making a big push to establish universal health care coverage. She and her colleagues want to create a single-payer trust fund to provide health coverage for all residents regardless of who they work for or their ability to pay.

Costs would be controlled through global budgeting, which would replace present efforts to micromanage care through a network of gatekeepers and clerks beholden to insurance companies who interfere in the practice of medicine.

Organizers say streamlining the system and eliminating insurance empires could save billions in wasted effort, advertising expense, corporate profits and extravagant salaries for chief executive officers and others on the health-care gravy train.

The savings would be used to extend coverage to 650,000-plus uninsured people in Washington.

Also, coverage would be guaranteed for such services as mental health care, prescription drugs and long-term care, for which private insurance is minimal or nonexistent.

Patients would be free once again to see the physicians of their choice.

Historically, small business has been solidly opposed to universal health care. Lobbyists for the insurance industry persuaded small-business owners and managers to think that universal health care had to cost them more.

It doesn’t. If a 1 percent universal tax is passed and everybody chips in across the board, universal health care will end up costing small businesses less, if I’m not mistaken. And small businesses won’t get hassled any more to provide expensive insurance coverage that many of them literally can’t afford to purchase, even for themselves.

That’s the way I see it, and I was surprised by the response of the audience.

I asked for a show of hands. Roughly eight out of 10 were in favor of the concept of universal health care coverage done this way.

The chief reservations expressed revolved around opening up a Pandora’s box with any form of income tax - dedicated or not.

Some in the audience offered a way around this, however. Instead of calling this method of funding an income tax, give it another name, such as a health tax.

As one of my listeners pointed out, that’s what politicians have been doing for years when they speak of the most onerous form of income tax ever inflicted on free enterprise. It’s called the Business & Occupation Tax.