To the editor:

Among solutions to important public policy issues, the most seductive — and the most deceptive — is the single-payer option Julie Pease advocates for health care, (Local commentary, “ Universal health care can’t wait,” Jan. 13).

A model that would provide access to care for everyone without any personal financial constraint is irresistible. The problem, which Dr. Pease glosses over, is how to pay for this utopia.

Health care costs don’t go away just because a third party pays the bills; indeed, they are likely to go up if demand increases, as it always does when a valuable product or service appears to be free or significantly undervalued.

Third party payers can only control supply in an effort to constrain costs, which in health care means inevitable cost controls on providers and rationing of care.

Social-welfare countries that have single-payer systems are all under varying degrees of financial stress because of rising health care costs, and many of them are turning to private market solutions for relief.

The U.S. has its own singlepayer systems in the form of Medicare and Medicaid whose financial trajectories the programs’ own trustee says are unsustainable.

Insurance in Maine has been exorbitantly expensive because of years of onerous regulation that raised costs and eliminated most competition. Last year, the Maine Legislature began taking steps that will gradually undo some of the harmful effects of these misguided rules.

A single-payer system that hides costs by shifting them from individuals to taxpayers would be a giant step back and would quickly become a financial disaster in a poor state like Maine.

Dr. Pease disdains the benefits of competition and ignores the perverse incentives of a third party payment system. She knows the patient is ill, but she doesn’t understand the causes and prescribes exactly the wrong treatment.

Martin Jones, 
Freeport

[email protected]