Is Single-Payer the Only Plan That Will Reduce Medical Bankruptcies?

That’s the argument made by David Himmelstein, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, who told The New York Times over the weekend that no other proposal being debated on Capitol Hill would rein in the estimated 900,000 medical bankruptcies expected to hit patients in the United States this year.

A single-payer system, such as the one proposed by my colleagues and myself, not only covers everyone, but also eliminates co-pays, deductibles and virtually all uncovered medical bills … That’s how it works in Canada. Every Canadian has coverage with zero co-pays and zero deductibles. As a result, when they get sick, they’re not forced to pay for care. It’s the coincidence of bills coming when you’re least able to pay them that creates the problem.

Not that the single-payer model is politically feasible at this point in the debate. Indeed, by framing the public option as the left’s starting argument, Democratic leaders — including President Obama — ensured that the single-payer strategy was dead before the debate began in earnest.

Still, Himmelstein’s research — including the troubling statistic that three-quarters of medical bankruptcies hit patients who had insurance coverage when they got sick — is something for policymakers to consider while they’re extolling the virtues of the other proposals being floated on the Hill. Here, for example, is David Axelrod on Meet the Press Sunday:

The idea here is to keep the American people from going broke as a result of soaring healthcare costs that have doubled in the last 10 years, risen three times the rate of wages. We want to bring security to the people who have insurance so that they’re not thrown off their insurance if they get sick, so that if they lose their job or change their job, they’ll still have coverage, so that people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance. That’s what the American people need to know.

With stories like these popping up nationwide, it’s clear that cost — not just coverage — also needs to be a focus of attention.