28) Ramah Leith

Title: Interview with University of Oregon Health Educator Ramah Leith

Summary: Health Educator Ramah Leith believes that a single-payer system would be an appropriate shift from our third-party system. She arrived to this conclusion using both logical and ethical reasoning.

Topic: Should the Obama administration attempt to  convert the United States to a single-payer health care system?
Category: Citizen. Stakeholder

What is it? Interview
Publication Information: Mar. 2, 2009
Author: None
Location: Eugene, OR
Accessed: Mar. 2, 2009

Support:
Ramah Leith
The work experience and research as a Health Educator and Peer Health Education Internship Instructor over the past eight years at the University of Oregon.

Audience and Agenda:
Ramah Leith earned her Bachelor of Arts in Health and Human Sciences, and her Masters in Public Health Education. She has worked at the University of Oregon as a Health Educator and Peer Health Education Internship Instructor for eight years. Leith has also operated many other stations in the health care field including: Health and Disability Services Program Coordinator, Outreach Volunteer and Service Learning Instructor, and a HIV, CPR and First Aid Instructor for the Red Cross.

Usefulness:
Ramah Leith believes that health care should be a basic right and service in America, and she feels that for a government to exclude 46 million Americans from health care is “inhumane.” 18,000 people in America die each year due to lack of health care coverage, and every 30 seconds an American declares bankruptcy because of unpayable medical bills. Leith believes that we should enact a single-payer system in the United States to assure that all Americans are covered and that all are able to get the care that they need. The Obama administration has recently been discussing an adaptation of the current health care system to insure more people and keep the insurance companies intact. But Leith argues that government regulation of insurance companies will drain more money and resources than a single-payer system would. Unfortunately, the road-blocks that are preventing single-payer do not consist of ethical arguments; instead it is a combination of the political framework of America, an un-educated and misinformed public, and the market-based system that has entrenched the country in a third-party payer system. Amidst the lack of support from Washington for a single-payer system, Leith believes that a single payer-system is the future for America because it is starting to affect more and more people. She says that it’s getting to the point where so many people are “pissed off” about the current system that a single-payer system seems probable in the future.

Works cited:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~uoshc/aboutus/staff/leith.html
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
pnhp.org
google.com

For other Interview posts check out…
27) Barbara Walter
24) Jon Palfreman
23) Bob Templin

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