The American College of Physicians’ endorsement of single payer
January 21, 2020
Topics: Quote of the Day
By Robert Doherty, B.A.; Thomas G. Cooney, M.D.; Ryan D. Mire, M.D.; Lee S. Engel, M.D.; Jason M. Goldman, M.D.; for the Health and Public Policy Committee and Medical Practice and Quality Committee of the American College of Physicians
Annals of Internal Medicine, January 21, 2020
U.S. health care costs too much; leaves too many behind without affordable coverage; creates incentives that are misaligned with patients’ interests; undervalues primary care and public health; spends too much on administration at the expense of patient care; fails to invest and support public health approaches to reduce preventable injuries, deaths, diseases, and suffering; and fosters barriers to care for and discrimination against vulnerable individuals.
The ACP’s Vision of a Better Health Care System for All
The ACP believes the United States can, and must, do better and offers the following 10 vision statements for a better health care system for all.
- The American College of Physicians envisions a health care system where everyone has coverage for and access to the care they need, at a cost they and the country can afford.
(Nine more vision statements listed.)
The accompanying policy papers offer specific recommendations, supporting rationales, and evidence on ways the United States can move to achieve ACP’s vision.
In “Envisioning a Better Health Care System for All: Coverage and Cost of Care” (1), ACP recommends transitioning to a system of universal coverage through either a single payer system, or a public choice to be offered along with regulated private insurance. Although each approach has advantages and disadvantages, either can achieve ACP’s vision of a health care system where everyone has coverage for and access to the care they need, at a cost they and the country can afford. The evidence suggests that publicly financed and administered plans have the potential to reduce administrative spending and associated burdens on patients and clinicians compared with private insurers. Other approaches were considered by ACP, including market-based approaches, yet ACP found they would fall short of achieving our vision of affordable coverage and access to care for all. The ACP asserts that under a single payer or public option model, payments to physicians and other health professionals, hospitals, and others delivering health care services must be sufficient to ensure access and not perpetuate existing inequities, including the undervaluation of primary and cognitive care.
The ACP proposes that costs be controlled by lowering excessive prices, increasing adoption of global budgets and all-payer rate setting, prioritizing spending and resources, increasing investment in primary care, reducing administrative costs, promoting high-value care, and incorporating comparative effectiveness and cost into clinical guidelines and coverage decisions.
In “Envisioning a Better Health Care System for All: Health Care Delivery and Payment Systems” (2), ACP calls for increasing payments for primary and cognitive care services, redefining the role of performance measures to focus on value to patients, eliminating “check-the-box” reporting of measures, and aligning payment incentives with better outcomes and lower costs. The position paper calls for eliminating unnecessary or inefficient administrative requirements, and redesigning health information technology to better meet the needs of clinicians and patients. The ACP concludes there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reforming delivery and payment systems, and a variety of innovative payment and delivery models should be considered, evaluated, and expanded.
In “Envisioning a Better Health Care System for All: Reducing Barriers to Care and Addressing Social Determinants of Health” (3), ACP calls for ending discrimination and disparities in access and care based on personal characteristics; correcting workforce shortages, including the undersupply of primary care physicians; and understanding and ameliorating social determinants of health. This position paper calls for increased efforts to address urgent public health threats, including injuries and deaths from firearms; environmental hazards; climate change; maternal mortality; substance use disorders; and the health risks associated with nicotine, tobacco use, and electronic nicotine delivery systems.
These are just a partial summary of the recommendations in the 3 position papers; considered together, they offer a comprehensive and interconnected set of policies to guide the way to a better a health care system for all. We urge readers of this call to action to review the 3 papers for a complete understanding of ACP’s recommendations and the evidence in support of them.
The ACP rejects the view that the status quo is acceptable, or that it is too politically difficult to achieve needed change. By articulating a new vision for health care, ACP is showing a willingness to try to achieve a better U.S. health care system for all. We urge others to join us.
Better Is Possible: The American College of Physicians’ Vision for the U.S. Health Care System
Vol: 172, Issue 2 Supplement, January 21 2020
The following link provides full free access to nine papers in this special Annals of Internal Medicine/American College of Physicians Supplement on a bold new prescription for the U.S. health care system:
The American College of Physicians’ Endorsement of Single-Payer Reform: A Sea Change for the Medical Profession
By Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.; David U. Himmelstein, M.D.
Annals of Internal Medicine, January 21, 2020
For a century, most U.S. medical organizations opposed national health insurance. The endorsement by the American College of Physicians (ACP) of single-payer reform marks a sea change from this unfortunate tradition.
Canada’s generally positive experience is among the strands of evidence underpinning the ACP’s endorsement. A single-payer reform that reduced insurance overhead to 2% (the level for Canada and traditional Medicare) could save more than $200 billion annually. In addition, our multipayer system imposes complexity and expense on providers; the Cleveland Clinic has 210 000 000 different prices. Single-source payment could streamline reimbursement—for example, by replacing per patient hospital payment with global budgets and establishing uniform billing and documentation requirements. Hospitals and doctors could save billions on billing-related costs and repurpose those savings to expand care, making universal, first-dollar coverage affordable.
Achieving universal coverage would be costlier under the “public choice” model the ACP co-endorses along with single payer. Multipayer systems incorporating for-profit insurers have not gleaned large administrative savings. For-profit insurers’ overhead is high everywhere, and the persistence of multiple payers would hinder efforts to streamline providers’ billing-related work.
Moreover, real-world experience with 2 public choice models—Medicare’s Advantage program and the Consumer Oriented and Operated Plans (CO-OPs) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)—warns that in health insurance competition, public option good guys finish last.
Although no reform achieves perfection, evidence indicates that a well-structured single-payer reform might resolve our nation’s coverage and affordability problems, preserve the choices patients value, and allow doctors to focus on what matters most: caring for our patients.
PNHP release:
https://pnhp.org…
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Welcome to a bright new day in health care reform.
The American College of Physicians (ACP) is the largest physicians’ organization dedicated to patient care (the AMA has traditionally functioned primarily as a physicians’ guild). “ACP recommends transitioning to a system of universal coverage through either a single payer system, or a public choice to be offered along with regulated private insurance.”
ACP has proffered a large volume of material that presents a multitude of problems with our current expensive but underperforming health care system. They present many options for reform that have been under consideration, but, as mentioned, they single out two for their vision of a better U.S. health care system for all: 1) single payer, or 2) a “public choice” with regulated private insurance.
Included in the AIM supplement is an important paper by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein. They discuss the clear advantages of a Canadian-style single payer model, but they caution us about the deficiencies of the for-profit insurers that we have in the United States, and the failures of our experimentation with public choice models – CO-OPs and Medicare Advantage. (To understand better the problems with a private plan and public choice approach, you should read not only the full Woolhandler/Himmelstein paper at the link above, but also the voluminous material on this topic at pnhp.org.)
There is much more material in this AIM supplement, especially on delivery reform and addressing social determinants of health, but it is important to not get buried under the reams of material such that you might be distracted from the overriding imperative of ACP’s vision for reform – the pressing need to enact and implement the essential infrastructure on which we can build the rest of reform – a single payer national health program.
Stay informed! Visit www.pnhp.org/qotd to sign up for daily email updates.
About the Commentator, Don McCanne
Don McCanne is a retired family practitioner who dedicated the 2nd phase of his career to speaking and writing extensively on single payer and related issues. He served as Physicians for a National Health Program president in 2002 and 2003, then as Senior Health Policy Fellow. For two decades, Don wrote "Quote of the Day", a daily health policy update which inspired HJM.
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