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Single payer health care supporters held a hearing yesterday at the Committee of Education and Labor to testify on the need for health care reform. Those who testified to the committee was U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Geri Jenkins R.N., Walter Tsou M.D., David Gratzer M.D., and Marcia Angell M.D.

"The United States is spending more of our wealth, more of our business firms income, more of our family and individual income on healthcare than any of our industrial competitors anywhere in the world,” said subcommittee chair, Robert Andrews (D-NJ).

Conyers is proposing a bill entitled “The United States Health Care Act” that would “establish a non-profit, publicly-financed, privately-delivered health care system that would ensure that all Americans have meaningful access to the medical provider of their choice,” he said. The legislation would ensure that 3.5 percent of an individual's income would go towards a single payer fund and that the system would not be government-run, meaning that individuals would still be able to choose their own physicians, Conyers said.

But, “creating a new one-size-fits-all health care system modeled on Medicare is a recipe for disaster,” said Rep. John Kline (R-MN), senior Republican for the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions.

Panelist Dr. David Gratzer, opposes single payer healthcare in the U.S. “I was born and raised in Canada...I grew up under socialized medicine and I understand why people would believe in the single-payer system...I changed my mind because I saw the reality [of a single payer system]. Cancer outcomes are better in the United States than they are in Canada, survival rates are better for low birth rate children, even the income in equity health gradient is better than in the United States. ”

Canada currently has a publicly funded health care system with most services provided by the private sector.

When the panel was asked how a single-payer health care system would stimulate the economy, Jenkins described a recent economic study that was done by her and her colleagues: “We not only found that a single-payer system would create a net gain of 2.6 million jobs, it would increase business and public revenues by $317 billion. An additional employee compensation would be another $100 billion which would generate an another $44 billion in tax revenues.”