The doctors are in! Ralph welcomes Dr. Steffi Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program to give us the latest on the campaign for single-payer health care. And Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, tells us what’s really behind the words Donald Trump is saying.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health and health policy in the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health an adjunct professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Woolhandler has authored more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters, and books on health policy. She is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which is a non-profit research and education organization that advocates for single-payer national health insurance.
“The beauty of the single-payer system once you implement it: you get huge savings in administration. It’s very easy to implement insurance that’s universal. You have a very low overhead, only about 2% versus the multi-payer systems where the overhead is usually about 12%. You make it possible for your hospitals to simplify their billing departments – pretty much get rid of their billing departments – and just receive a lump sum budget the way like any other service like a fire department would get a budget. You make things simpler for your doctors, because they send all their bills to one place. That kind of administration in Canada saves them at least half a trillion dollars a year on just paperwork and bureaucracy costs. And you use that money to cover everyone.”
Dr. Steffi Woohandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program
Dr. Bandy Lee is a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Lee edited the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Prior to the impeachment vote in the House, she, along with 970 other health professionals, sent a letter to Congress members warning of Trump’s “dangerous” mental state arising from his “brittle sense of self-worth.” Dr, Lee also did a psychological “translation” of President Trump’s recent letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“(Donald Trump’s) primitive desire to be the king of everything, the best in everything and admired by everyone allows him to sense the primitive drives in other people far more effectively than any conscious mind strategy could. So, it’s very dangerous indeed, because he will be echoing those thoughts. People would mistake that for being empathy or understanding other people. He is not doing it to understand other people. He’s doing it for his own purposes: for overpowering them, for using them, deceiving and manipulating them, and preying upon them.”
Dr. Bandy X. Lee: psychiatrist Yale School of Medicine
“Whenever he names other people derogatory names, he’s actually denying these qualities belong to him. It’s all an unconscious process, though. If he calls someone else those things before he gets called out, it feels like he is immunizing himself.”
Dr. Bandy X. Lee: psychiatrist Yale School of Medicine
The King of Everything