investigativevoice.com

By Stephen Janis

Sitting in the Common Ground coffee shop in Hampden Friday afternoon, pediatrician Eric Naumberg displays the low-key mannerisms of a doctor who could heal the sick simply by imparting a bit of his own personal serenity.

But Dr. Naumberg's calm bedside manner, the result of years of delivering babies in the Baltimore region, did not dissuade officials at Maryland Care First from having the physician arrested and tossed into the city’s Central Booking facility during a protest in October over health care reform at the company’s Canton offices.

Naumberg, and his colleague Dr. Margaret Flowers, also a pediatrician, were cuffed and charged with trespassing after they sat down on the floor in the lobby, refusing to leave.

Now, having just completed their community service Friday at the city's 28th Street dumping station, both doctors said they were forced to endure the blunt end of the U.S. justice system to call attention to the fact that the debate over health care reform is lacking.

“The real solution is a single-payer system,” Naumberg said. “It provides universal access to care, and saves money.”

They argue much of the U.S. spending on health care goes to fatten the pockets of highly paid health care executives, not to the care of patient. With a single-payer system, hospitals, doctors and other health care providers would bill the same government-run organization, similar to the way Medicare operates. Proponents say the system would reduce paperwork, and most importantly save money by eliminating the so-called corporate middleman, who soaks up between 15 to 30 cents of every health care dollar spent in the United States for administrative costs.

“Doctors spend on average $70,000 per year just processing paperwork for insurance companies,” said Flowers, who has been arrested twice for protesting,

“The estimate is that we would save $400 billion a year if we went to a single-payer system,” Naumberg said.

But since the democratic party leaders abandoned the single-payer idea early in the health care reform debate, both doctors said health care providers who support a single-payer system have been left out of the debate.

That’s why the two physicians joined a group of nearly 17,000 health care providers nationwide who believe the single-payer system is the answer. Unfortunately the organization has had a tough time getting a seat at the table.

“There were 41 health care lobbyists and insurance company representatives who testified in front of Senator Max Baucus' Finance committee,” Flowers noted.

“But they wouldn’t let one person from our organization testify.”

Thus Flowers staged a sit-down protest in the Senate in August, resulting in her first of two arrests. The first for which she pled guilty.

“I’m still on probation,” she said.

Much of the problem, the doctors argue, has been media coverage that has failed to adequately inform the public about the benefits of the single-payer system.

Former Green Party candidate Kevin Zeese agrees. “No question. Television and newspapers [both struggling] are dependent on insurance and pharmaceutical advertising and there is a great deal of interlocking boards between the industry and newspapers,” said Zeese, now executive director of a web site called the Prosperity Agenda.

The savings from using a single-payer system, Zeese said, would be more than enough to offset the cost of insuring the 41 million Americans who currently do not have health insurance.

“The U.S. has double the number of insurance agents than doctors. Hospitals often have one insurance billing agent per bed, more administrators than nurses [who are very overworked],” Zeese said.

“Doctors spend 3.5 weeks a year dealing with the insurance industry and 20% of their overhead. Businesses also have overhead with insurance. And, consumers have to fight to get covered, wasting a lot of their time. Medicare's overhead is 3%, in comparison.”

A spokesperson for the national lobbying arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield America, said private insurers' overhead had has been exagerrated.

"Health plans’ costs to administer benefits represent an average of only 9 percent of premiums across all policies sold," said spokesperson Kelly MIller, citing a study by the Shelock Company released in October,

But Zeese said the true beneficiaries of the current bill will be insurance companies, not the uninsured.

“It should be called The Insurance Enrichment Act because it is primarily a massive giveaway to the insurance industry. It will result in hundreds of billions in annual new revenue to the industry.”

A spokesman for CareFirst Maryland said his company had nothing to do with the arrest of either doctor.

"We -- CareFirst -- did not have Dr. Naumberg or any protester arrested, no matter what they may contend.  Dr. Naumberg and other representatives came into the lobby while the main body of protesters remained outside the building.  I -- as a representative of CareFirst -- spoke to Naumberg and the group.  I then left and CareFirst played no role in their arrests," said Michael Sullivan, spokesman for CareFirst in Maryland.

"CareFirst is merely a tenant in the building and played no role in the protesters' arrests. Any decision to have them arrested for trespassing was made either by the Baltimore City police or the building management. " 

Still., Naumberg said he believes there would be wide public support for a single-payer system if people knew the facts, a notion confirmed during his eight-hour stint behind bars at Central Booking.

“Once the other inmates knew what we were doing, they were very supportive,” he said.

“The irony is in prison it is illegal to deny someone health care,” Flowers added. “Outside of jail, you’re on your own.”

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