FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - April 14,
2000
Contact: Tim Clarke, Jr., AMSA Director of Public
Relations
Daytime Phone: (703) 620-6600, ext. 207
The following is a letter to the editor of The Washington Times by David Grande, MD, national president of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA)-the nation's largest, independent medical student organization-in response to criticism from the Heritage Foundation:
Mr. Robert Moffit, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation continues to cloud the debate with the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) over universal health care ("Diagnosis is that medical student group favors socialized medicine," Letters, April 11th). If we are to discuss opposing views in health reform, lets be honest, cut through the rhetoric and describe our vision for health reform.
AMSA supports a system that would provide universal comprehensive access to care through a single payer. In this type of system insurance coverage is determined by patient, physician and government representatives under public scrutiny rather than behind the closed doors of a corporate board room. This simplified model of health-care delivery significantly reduces administrative waste and allows insurance dollars to be spent on clinical services rather than profit and excess administration. Medicare has proven this by spending less than 3% while the private sector spends an average of 12%-14% on overhead.
AMSA strongly supports returning medicine to patients and doctors and providing consumers with the right to choose their physician. A single-payer system embodies these principles and returns medicine to its primary mission of healing and preventing disease while guaranteeing every American access to quality affordable health care.
It is unclear whether the Heritage Foundation believes in universal health care. All of their proposals are centered on tax subsidies and medical savings accounts. A study by J. Gruber and L. Levitt published in the Jan-Feb, 2000 issue of the journal Health Affairs concluded that even the most effective tax subsidies would cost almost $40 billion a year and cover only 30 percent of the uninsured.
If the Heritage Foundation does not believe in universal health care, the question that AMSA submits is, "Who would you leave out?" How can we, the wealthiest democracy in the world deny one-sixth of our fellow Americans such a basic human need as health?
