Hello, Dr. Keith Smith with you here on behalf of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, thank you for joining me.

Here’s a lie that many of you believe: single-payer in the United States, a system of that type would result in all the insurance companies being kicked to the curb, bankrupted, put out of business and all their profit seeking would end.

A link at the bottom of the written version of this blog will take you to an article containing quotes by the CEO of a large health care company in the United States who more accurately portrays what single-payer is likely to look like in the U.S. if we, unfortunately, pursue that path.

He envisions that the U.S. government would simply be a collector of the premiums for various private companies that would be the “backroom” of operations for a system like this. I wrote an article that was sort of tongue-in-cheek back in 2012 where I thought, and mused, that the Canadian system as awful as it is, was better than what the unaffordable care act and Obamacare might become. It turns out that my worst thoughts in that article are exactly what Mr. Bertolini envisions in his quotes.

I would encourage you to check these two articles out and not be fooled by this lie that going to single-payer in the United States means these insurance companies go out of business. If anything, it means their profits are even wildly greater than they are right now.

Thank you, we’ll see you next time.

Read Mr. Bertolini’s article.