Your Role in the Health Care Crisis

In my most recent article (scroll down, below this one), we explored whether the recent recommendations that women cut back on mammograms and pap smears make sense; and, if that philosophical shift is the beginning of healthcare rationing. On the first matter, I interviewed an expert on the topic and sided with her when she suggested that women take too many unnecessary tests. Regarding the issue about rationing, it is easy to be suspicious, but it is too early to make that assertion without some hard evidence.

Following that post, I received several emails on the topic and other people left interesting “comments” at the end of the main article. There was a broad range of ideas among the group, but the underlying theme is we are all dissatisfied. The most fascinating fact is there was never any discussion of the Obama healthcare bill currently on the table. The collective silence about that matter was deafening.

What I gathered from all of this is everybody dislikes something about the healthcare system. Let’s see who the biggest culprits are.

Doctors: One hundred years ago doctors did not have to go to college, just medical school. They made house calls, they accepted chickens and other insignificant items as payment for their services, and they were considered to be ordinary members of the community: certainly not entitled to a life of luxury.

All of that changed over time, but especially beginning in the 80’s as health insurance became common. When that happened, the public stopped worrying about the cost of their doctor’s bills because they believed that somebody else was paying the freight. Once the shackles were removed from the public’s ability to pay for medical treatments, the doctors were free to charge as much as the deeper pockets of the insurance companies would pay.

Now waiting rooms are packed and it seems like the employees at the doctors’ offices are more concerned with who our insurance company is than what our ailments are.

This concept has worked so well for physicians that other professionals such as dentists, veterinarians and chiropractors have employed similar concepts

Hospitals and other care givers: Naturally, the hospitals have jumped on the insurance band wagon. Their employees, along with suppliers of drugs and other goods and services have also ended up on-board. They are all able to make a better living because of the insurance arrangement than they would in a more competitive system where consumers pay for services themselves.

Insurance companies: Color this industry paradoxical. While it may seem like they are doing us a big favor as they pay our expensive medical bills, the truth is they are actually stealing even more money out of our purses. Their feigned attempts to control medical costs are nothing more than sophisticated distraction from the reality that the higher prices climb, the more they make. While insurance industry profit margins may be only 6%, would you imagine they would rather make 6% of two-million dollars or 6% of one-million dollars? So in the short term they may put on a dog and pony show about cutting costs, but in the bigger picture, quite the opposite is true.

Finally, consider this. The insurance companies have to take in more money than they pay out in claims, and all other expenses, or they could not stay in business. Therefore, we pay more for premiums than all of the actual costs of medical services combined. We would be better off financially without the insurance companies, even if prices stayed the same. But if there were no insurance companies then prices would drop because doctors, care givers, suppliers and all of the others would have to compete for the business.

Seniors: We all feel compassion for seniors and we want them to enjoy a dignified life style in their later years, but there is a dirty little secret. The seniors of today (65 and over) have been exploiting the kindness of others for years. They have lived through the most prosperous decades known to man kind but far too few of them prepared financially for their golden years. Regardless of their irresponsible behavior, they have played on the sympathy of the rest of us and managed to obtain generally comparable medical care to what we buy for ourselves. According to The Commonwealth Fund, Medicare was a fairly successful program in 2005 and the Obama Administration says they are committed to making it even better. The sentiment cannot be denied.

Since most seniors are retired, they have the time to write their Representatives and make demands. Those are not empty threats either, because a high percentage of seniors also vote. All of that could have been avoided if seniors had done a better job preparing for retirement, or if they relied upon their families or charities to help them, rather than the government. That way most of the waste would be cut out of their spending.

Illegal immigrants: It is no secret that millions of these people have come to this country just to have babies. Unsurprisingly, very few of them have the resources to pay their own medical expenses for child birth or anything else. Therefore, the services are provided and the expenses are passed along to the rest of us in the form of higher health insurance premiums. The problem is both widespread and local.California alone spends nine-billion dollars per year on this group and we all know where that has gotten them. We could explore the other financial implications of their visits, but that is a topic for another day.

Congress: Since most national politicians are more interested in getting reelected than they are in doing what is right, they keep stealing Other People’s Money in various ways and throwing it at the seniors’ medical needs, in exchange for their votes. Together these “entitlement” programs have cost us trillions of dollars.

Furthermore, the Congress lends little more than lip service to the illegal immigrant issues, which could be resolved in a responsible way without hurting anybody who is willing to take some responsibility. Even I can come up with a sensible way to address the matter. (More on this in a future article.) But in the mean time an irresponsible congress turns a blind eye to a problem the rest of us see so clearly.

The public: While we, the people, are the screwees in all of this, we are not without our share of the blame. For starters, we don’t have the backbone to stand up to any of the folks who are exploiting the system. Furthermore, many of us invade the doctor’s office at the first hint of a sore throat or a headache. We rationalize our behavior by telling ourselves that we might as well get some value out of all of those high insurance premiums we pay. Most members of group-plans are not exempt from this discussion (this too is for a future article.) As expected, the doctors don’t do anything to discourage us from visiting them for such minor issues. We rarely question the bill because it gets passed on to the insurance company, from whom any resistance is insincere for reasons previously mentioned.

When we take an overview like this, we can see that our health care system and the related insurance programs, both private and public, are fraught with dubious motives. There are so many people sticking their fingers in the “I care about you” pie, that we are flushing away valuable resources, which could provide these services in a much more cost-effective way: Namely the free enterprise system. But, since too few of us plan ahead, and newspapers love to exploit sad stories about those who are left out, soft-hearted do-gooders will always be willing to subsidize the irresponsible behavior with tax payer’s money.

To their credit, the Obama Administration has recognized these problems and they have embarked on a journey to do something about it. Good for them! The problem is they are doing the exact wrong thing. The last thing the bloated pig needs is more government waste. I might lend them the benefit of the doubt if they fixed the Social Security System, Medicare and Medicaid first. At least then they would have credibility. But only a moron would believe that we can insure another fifty-million people without cutting back on services and raising expenses on those of us who actually pay the bill.

What say you?

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