Radio Times on
WHYY Philadelphia, November 29, 2007
Robert Reich comes out clearly in favor of
universal single payer health care while speaking with Health Care
For All PA's Chuck Pennacchio during a call-in segment. We
have excerpted the relevant exchange below, or you can listen to the
entire 47-minute show
here
(requires Real Audio).
Introduction
Can too much capitalism be bad for democracy? We'll talk with
Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary under President Clinton, whose new
book is Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and
Everyday Life. In it, he argues that capitalism is turning us into a nation
of consumers and investors who are becoming apathetic about being involved
in their government and communities. Reich is a Professor of Public Policy
at the University of California at Berkeley.
Pennacchio:
Thank you so much for having Dr.
Reich on the program today. Just for disclosure purposes, I’m Chuck
Pennacchio, Executive Director of HealthcareforALLPA. We’re working for
universal single-payer health care here in the state of Pennsylvania so as
to model it for the national government to elevate and create Medicare for
all. And I would like you to speak to the role of capitalism in health care
delivery with the existence of the existing insurance and pharmaceuticals
taking anywhere from 30 to 40% of health care dollars as compared to the
Medicare-type system for Americans who are 65 and above and then allowing
that type system to work for all Pennsylvanians and then ultimately all
Americans
Reich:
Let me tell you what you already
know, but maybe other listeners are not quite as aware because they haven’t
been paying that much attention to health care. Insurance companies are not
evil, but the insurance companies, because they are competing so intensely,
those insurance companies are looking for people who are relatively low
risk, who are not going to get sick. And they are advertising and marketing
and spending a lot of money trying to find low-risk, relatively healthy
people to insure, and avoiding high-risk sick people.
We have the only health care system
in the world that is basically designed to avoid sick people. But
because insurance companies are competing so intensely with advertising and
marketing trying to avoid sick people that means that the price of health
care is much higher than it otherwise would be. The reason that Medicare
has such low overhead costs is because Medicare doesn’t have to do that kind
of fighting. Medicare basically just delivers health care. I, like you
Chuck, think we ought to have Medicare for all. We ought to have a
single-payer, stop this silliness that we’re into now with thinking that we
can actually deliver efficient health care with a private insurance system.
