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This week 50 medical doctors, in a bipartisan effort, filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court to argue that the individual mandate at the heart of the 2010 healthcare reform bill is unconstitutional. The doctors and two non-profit groups are not right wing critics of Obama, but advocates of what’s called “a single payer healthcare” system. Dr. Margaret Flowers, who is also an activist and member of Occupy DC, said the Affordable Care Act and individual mandate requiring all Americans to carry insurance, “[f]unnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care.” Joe Jarvis, a doctor from Utah, a Republican and a single payer advocate said he’s opposed to the Affordable Care Act because, “It’s a propping up of the private insurance business model. What they’re trying to do is force us to buy, in most cases, poor quality health benefits.”

Single payer healthcare has been a hot topic since the great healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010, but the organization, Physicians for a National Health Program, has advocated for a single payer system since 1987. The National Coordinator for the program is Dr. Quentin Young.

Being one of the founding members of the group is only one of many distinctions in Dr. Young’s storied career. Dr. Quentin Young was a founding member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1964 and volunteered to provide medical care to civil rights protesters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. He was a personal physician to Martin Luther King Jr and helped the Black Panthers and the Young Lords set up medical clinics in their communities. Dr. Young also provided medical care to protesters injured by police at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where 23,000 police officers were dispatched to quell protests. He is a personal friend of President Barack Obama with whom he disagrees on the need for single payer healthcare.

GUEST: Dr. Quentin Young, National Coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program

Visit www.pnhp.org for more information.

Money Driven Medicine

Expensive medical bills continue to push Americans into bankruptcy while insurance companies and hospitals rake in the cash. Two studies released earlier this year showed medical industry profits continued to skyrocket in 2010, while many US businesses and workers suffered under the high cost of healthcare. The American Hospital Association found that in 2010 community hospitals reported over $50 billion in profits, a 50% increase from the year before. A Bloomberg Government study of health insurance companies found that profit margins widened in 2010 after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. These same insurers lobbied hard against healthcare reform and, together, contributed $82.6 million to the US Chamber of Commerce to fight the bill.

Every few months we hear about the obscene profits healthcare providers collect while insurance premiums and co-pays rise and the quality of care declines. The rising cost of medical care in this country hits the pocketbook of most Americans, and the inability of families and employers to afford health insurance is close to becoming a public health emergency. Patients themselves are increasingly blamed as the cause of rising costs.

Common wisdom holds that Americans need too much care because we are too sick, too overweight, or too old to receive affordable services. A new documentary, based on a book by journalist Maggie Mahar, exposes the complicated mix of factors that drive up the cost of healthcare in the US. Money Driven Medicine, based on Mahar’s book by the same name, makes a solid case for universal coverage by featuring doctors, patients, medical and financial experts who all see that the root of dysfunction in the US healthcare system is the chase for the almighty dollar.

Money Driven Medicine examines why patients are subjected to unnecessary tests and procedures, how hospitals have become engaged in a technology race, why business executives, not medical professionals, run hospitals, and why so many young medical students decide against becoming primary care doctors, choosing specializations instead.

Visit www.moneydrivenmedicine.org for more information about the film.