Single-payer health system encouraged

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

A coalition of health and other advocacy groups appealed to a legislative committee Wednesday to push a single-payer health care system that would provide health care coverage to all Nevadans.

Joseph Jarvis, an associate professor with the University of Nevada School of Medicine, said the state government could run a health care system for all Nevadans that would allow them to go to private hospitals and doctors.

The system would cover everybody in the state, allow people to choose their own doctors and control the administrative costs of dispensing health care, Jarvis said.

"(Health care) is something all of us are entitled to," said Larry Struve, who spoke on behalf of the Religious Alliance in Nevada, a coalition of five denominations. "You can go into the Old Testament and find many references to that."

Their testimony came just as a study was released showing almost 17 percent of Nevadans had no health care coverage in 2004, up about 1 percent from 2003.

The study was conducted by the Great Basin Primary Care Association, a coalition of clinics and other health care providers that advocates that all people should have health care.

When counting Nevadans who had insurance at some point during the year but not continuously, the number jumped to 21 percent, according to Roger Volker, director of the group, who testified in support of a single-payer health care system.

But even the most sympathetic members of the Assembly Commitee on Health and Human Services said they couldn't create statewide health care without obtaining federal permission to put a different use to federal funds.

Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, the chairwoman of the group, said she believes a single-payer system is the best method to insure people but the Legislature couldn't do it without Congressional approval.

Still, she said, she wants to talk to Democratic leadership about initiating some conversation on how to promote the idea.

Others, such as the two doctors on the health committee -- who are both Republicans -- said they had reservations about government running a health care system.

Assemblyman Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, pointed out that mortality rates for several types of cancer are significantly higher in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, where the government provides universal health care, than in the United States.

Jarvis said the single-payer scenario is unlikely to happen as long as insurance companies continue to wield power over Washington.

"The biggest argument anywhere against it is the political feasibility," he said.