By Nadin Nauman

The healthcare reform fight has found a new base in Centre County as a group of local residents organized in August to push for statewide single-payer healthcare legislation, an option considered more radical than any being considered in Washington D.C.

In the past few months, the group, which calls itself Citizens for Healthcare Reform, has held open meetings and rallies around the county to gain support for a plan it says is the answer to the country’s healthcare woes.

 “Our current system is broken,” Halfmoon Township resident Brenda Black told Voices. “We can’t keep it or else it’ll impair our nation.”

Black explained that since she became involved she hasn’t heard one good reason why single-payer insurance is not the way to go.

“Centre County has a growing number of voters who really care about our connections on Earth,” said Black. “It may not really be Happy Valley for everyone but there are a lot of us here who are willing to try to live our values which include better lives for ourselves and others.” Single-payer advocates say that it is the only proven system of all being proposed, that every industrialized nation has some form of single-payer and that it has worked more cheaply and provided more services to more Americans in the form of Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Administration benefits than any other system.

Current legislation pending in Harrisburg would tax individuals 3 percent of their income (compared to the average 8 percent they now spend on healthcare) and employers 10 percent (compared to the 30 to 35 percent they now spend) to fund the program. No one would carry insurance or pay premiums or co-pays anymore and all Pennsylvanians would be covered.

The local group’s most visible event was a Sept. 24 public meeting held in the State College Borough Council Chambers that drew more than 100 people and is being rebroadcast on C-NET this month. The moderator of the event was Chris Calkins, director of Outreach Health Initiatives at Penn State and the panel included Ron Fisher, a practicing psychiatrist from Huntingdon, Chuck Pennacchio, the leader of the statewide Healthcare for All Pa., Sajay Samuel, a Penn State economist and Jon Eich chair of the Centre County Board of Commissioners who all took questions from the audience, which appeared overwhelmingly lopsided in support of reform.

The event was met with resistance from some borough council members and county commissioners because of what some called an imbalanced discussion. While the event was open to the public, the panel discussion only covered single-payer and not all healthcare reform options. Eventually, Halfmoon Township supervisors voted to sponsor the event so it could be aired on CNET and therefore held in the council chambers.

The group is also organizing an Oct. 20 rally in Harrisburg. Members of Healthcare for All PA and government officials will be joining local supporters at the rally which will include visits to legislators, according to a flier distributed at the Sept. 24 event.

But the new group is not without its detractors who believe single-payer is just another example of the government sticking its nose where it does not belong. “The Obama administration seems bent on socialization at the expense of a real dialogue that preserves Americans ability to choose their service providers,” Bellefonte resident Kathleen McCue said.

Some opponents of single-payer legislation or anything close, such as the “public option in the recent national debate, call it “socialist.” Centre County Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Myers echoed this sentiment.

“Mainly, the government doesn’t have any business running healthcare,” she told Voices. “If the government wants to get involved, do something about the 20 percent of people that need it instead of ruining what people have.”

But cries of “socialism” are what tell single-payer supporters that the opposition is missing the point. Karl Mierzejewski, another member of CFHR, related a story of a town hall meeting he attended where an irate reform protestor yelled, “Get government hands off my Medicare,” an absurd statement to Meirzejewski, who pointed out that Medicare is a government program.

According to Princeton University health economist Uwe E. Reinhardt, Medicare represents “forms of ‘social insurance‘ coupled with a largely private health-care delivery system” instead of “socialized medicine.” He described the Veterans Administration healthcare system as a pure form of socialized medicine because it is “owned, operated and financed by government.”

Mierzejewski, 57, is self-employed and said he was denied healthcare by Geisinger.

“I’m concerned because I’m getting old and I’ve got issues. Everyone should be covered. People shouldn’t be rejected for pre-existing conditions,” he said. The United States ranks 37th on a 2000 World Health Organization worldwide comparison of healthcare systems. Every country above the United States on the list provides some form of universal healthcare to its citizens.

“Take into account that the United States spends the most money per person on healthcare than any of the countries on the list,” said Jay Searles, another member of CFHR. Searles’ employer does not offer a health insurance plan, which forced him to seek private coverage on his own. This was not an attractive option for Searles, who got quotes from private companies telling him he’d have to foot a $250 per month bill just to get something “good.”

“And that’s only because I’m in good shape,” Searle said.

Local residents who oppose single-payer also oppose what they term “Obama’s plan” at the national level.

“The cost is prohibitive for the nation to take on this additional debt,” McCue said. “The government has not proven that it can run anything efficiently.” McCue pointed to the V.A. hospital system as an example of how the government falters in terms of quality, referring to a Washington Post report unveiling the conditions soldiers returning from Iraq were living in at Walter Reed hospital.

“They were sleeping in rooms with cockroaches, cheap mattresses and torn up walls,” said McCue. “Why does the Obama administration think that the government can do a better job than the private sector?”

At the statewide level, though, the debate is on more specific economic terms. Black argued that a government-administered program is more efficient. The insurance industry applies about 30 percent of premiums to profit, CEO salaries, lobbying expenses, paperwork and processing, she said. That means that 70 percent or less of premiums pay for healthcare. Medicare’s overhead cost, by comparison, is 3 percent.

“We would be getting a much bigger bang for our buck with single-payer legislation than what we have been receiving from the private sector,” she said. “Perhaps we could move up from the WHO’s ranking of 37th, just below Costa Rica.”