by Ann Settgast MD and Elizabeth Frost MD
Published in Minnesota Medicine
November 2009

As physicians, we are troubled by the direction of federal health care reform. Whether via a public health insurance option or an insurance mandate, the proposals on the table build on the structure of our broken system-the most costly, fragmented, and bureaucratic in the world...

...Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to achieving universal health care coverage in every other industrialized nation. We ask, "What if the rest of the world is right?" Only under single-payer can we eliminate the administrative costs associated with billing hundreds of payers and the sizeable overhead of the private insurance industry. These overhead dollars are spent marketing, underwriting, lobbying, and fighting claims-none of which makes our patients healthier. Elimination of this administrative waste would save more than $400 billion annually.  Read the entire article