Julie Creek, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an informative column on the subject of health care entitled Critical condition. Among other things, it lays out the difference between a “single payer” system, a socialized system, and the current “system” of health care. Some interesting statistics:
The amount the federal government’s Medicare program spends on administrative costs: 3%.
The amount the health care system over all spends on administrative costs: 30%.
The amount, per capita, Canadians with their single payer system spend on health care: $2,998.
The amount, per capita, Americans with our “free market” system spend on health care: $5,711.
We’re paying for it. We’re just not getting it. Friday afternoon, as I was driving up Meridian Street toward Carmel in the low 100s, I looked at the buildings on the street corners and thought to myself, “they’re pretty much giving away the game here, aren’t they?” Seemed like every big, lavish building was either an insurance company or a hospital. For myself, if I was taking an obscene rake off the health care dollars of the American people, I’d probably try to conduct my business from unassuming structures in strip malls. Because, if you have an opulent building, seems to me, when Americans finally get riled up, after they stop off to get their pitch forks and torches, they’re going to know exactly where to go.
[tags]health care[/tags]
I wonder when and if people will rise up and challenge the insurance companies and doctors. Remember, around thirteen years ago, the insurance companies went on a major advertising blitz against the Clinton plan. The scare tactics obviously worked and were partly responsible for the 1994 election. I don’t know why people didn’t see that the insurance companies were not looking out for their best interest.
The insurance companies aren’t to blame here.
FDR is.
During the wage freezes he instituted, businesses had to turn to other means to attract and retain employees.
Guess what they came up with?
That’s right, fringe benefits.
Now, when people are shielded from the direct expenses incurred from their actions, they tend to perform those actions more. So what do you think happened to health care costs when employers started offering health insurance plans?
Don’t blame the insurance companies. All they’re doing is making a profit–and there’s nothing wrong with that. Blame FDR. Blame Mitt Romney, whose little flight of irrational fancy is only going to make things worse.
Well, you don’t blame a scorpion for being a scorpion, but you do kill it when you get a chance.
And I don’t think the docs are really to blame here. Mostly their incomes have been stagnant while health care costs have skyrocketed.
Too many people view their health plan as a subscription, with the goal being to get more dollars of worth out than they pay in in premiums. This is seen in peoples’ request for name-brand medications that are more expensive, request for expensive tests right off the bat, etc. Frequently I see people who aren’t sick, but merely need someone to certify they WERE sick to avoid incurring “points” from their employers due to illness, or to fill out their FMLA paperwork (FMLA, meant to be used in chronic illness resulting in work absence, is frequently inappropriately invoked by employer or employee for such trivialities as the common cold). Too often, necessary tests are denied, then appealed, then ultimately appropriately approved in a seemingly endless dance between doctor and insurer. I can almost always predict what will end up being covered due to the obvious appropriateness of the treatment plan, but that doesn’t stop it from becoming a three person, one hour productivity-shredding process.
Reform the insurance industry. Reform the drug industry. Encourage more catastrophic coverage along with paying cash for services received during routine or ambulatory care. Nothing would reduce over-utilization of resources more than having people pay for services as they are received, using actual money. I could correspond by lowering fees, as I already have. In return for the decreased hassle, I give a 15% discount to cash-paying patients at the time of service.