I‘ve written extensively about healthcare reform. Those postings are full of numbers, arguments, observations and such. If your Alzheimer’s is temporarily predominant and you need some refreshing of those details, read or reread some of those articles.
This post, based largely on those articles, is just to put all of the various options together in context in very simple terms. My intent is just to provide a bit of perspective and tie it all up with a neat little bow. It is the result of my desire to clean up before going to another topic.
I dearly want to cover other subjects but I am certain this is such an important issue I will not be able to stay away. Those greedy little brats in Washington will draw me back time and again to refute even more examples of their endless supply of inanities.
Not always but on occasion I feel glimmers of hope emanating from the President. In response to a question at today’s news conference Obama said, “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care . . . then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”
John Sheils, who is described as a healthcare costs guru, says, “The single most expensive option is to build on the existing system.” Perhaps I should have left it to John, rather than carry on at such length in my posts. It really is that simple.
Anyone who wants any reform plan other than a single-payer system is a charlatan or a dupe of charlatans. Well, lookie there. I can be concise too, though I’m unlikely to make a habit of it. Anyway, that statement may seem a mite harsh but it is just a simple, obvious truth. No apologies.
Let’s go through the various options quickly. Co-op has received support from some Republican Senators and some Blue Dog Democrats. Actuarially this is a joke. The numbers of people to be covered by each co-op would be too small. The plan calls for a host of these spread around the rural parts of the country. The costs would be higher than present plans.
There is no way to induce a sufficient number of primary care physicians and those from the main specialties to rural areas other than for the government to heavily subsidize them. The same is true for other services as well. It is intentionally designed to be small and inefficient. The healthcare industry formulated this and handed it to some of their allies in the Senate.
Public option came from the legislature. That doesn’t mean it is less beneficial to the industry. It serves as diversion. Every incarnation of a public option is said to be a way of keeping the industry honest. They also appear to require a “level playing field.”
Does anyone believe that it is possible to keep them honest? If they remain in business they will still own Congress.
Level playing field? Such nonsense would require unbelievable amounts of subsidies to the private plans to make it possible to offer competitive premiums. This means that the government would give them far more each year than the supposedly one-time loans to the auto industry. This means your tax money being given to the most profitable industry in the country to maintain their profits and inefficiencies.
The real problem with the public option is that politicians and great numbers of the public believe it is a viable option. It isn’t. It is no more possible to create a level playing field than it is to expect the healthcare industry to play fair. 0 for 2 for this sham.
The single-payer plan suffers from a probably fatal flaw. Since it would be run by the government there are no bribes. Congress is the greenest activity in our country, although activity may be a poor choice of words. Congressmen are powered solely by greenbacks. Single-payer would have a chance if someone could figure how to own a congressman for free.
My own suggestion is to break the reform legislation into two parts. The first part should be passed before the second part is written. The first part would require all Congressmen to participate in and rely exclusively on whatever plan results from the second part of the legislation.
The entire exercise of creating healthcare reform is perplexing. In my simpleminded way of thinking I thought most of the discussion should focus on developing a rational, affordable, efficient plan to make healthcare available to everyone. I obviously missed the point.
Reading the news has been enlightening. I now understand that all of the health insurance industry and drug industry employees who sit in the House and Senate have only one duty: to protect the profits of their employers. If only someone had told me. It would have saved me from so much embarrassment.
The thought crossed my mind that some readers, having watched the Congress operate, may think that I also have a financial stake in this issue. If so, it would be very indirect. I enjoy the benefits of what might be seen as a single-payer system. I have been on Medicare for a number of years.
Whatever the outcome of the attempt to reform the system, I expect it will have minimal effect on me, one way or another. I do see what an undue and unsustainable burden the present system is for the people, the economy, the business community, our international competitive position and our government.
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Your discussion of co-ops and primary care physicians in rural areas got me to thinking and doing a tiny bit of investigating. You have exposed the tip of an iceberg. There are not enough general care doctors to meet current needs, let alone the demands of some 46 million uninsured, who threaten to swamp the system. In the U.S., there are at least 4,500 primary care doctors older than 75, according to figures from the Physicians Masterfile database maintained by the American Medical Association. They can’t/won’t retire because there is nobody to take their place in their local community. Obama needs to realize that it could be a problem when everybody has insurance, but there is no doctor to treat them.