ShareThisFour Republicans -- Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina along with Congressmen Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Devin Nunes of California -- have fired the first salvo in the great health care reform debate.
They've introduced the Patients' Choice Act. Now, although we have a pretty good idea of what Democrats have in mind, we await crystallization of their ideas into legislation.
The difference of approach of the two parties on health care rides on the same basic question that divides the country and the parties on everything else. Are the problems we're facing today the result of too much government intervention in our economy and our lives or not enough?
The Patients' Choice Act reflects Republican thinking that health care costs are out of control and, as result, not affordable for many, because of too much government. It allows Americans to take direct control of their health care expenditures by giving families and individuals cash in the form of a tax credit ($5700 and $2300 respectively) to buy insurance and set up a Health Savings Account.
Democrats will take things in the opposite direction. Rather than controlling costs and access through more competition and consumer control, they see it coming from more government and regulation. Mandates on employers to provide insurance, fines if they don't, and using those funds to finance a new subsidized government plan.
And central to cost control are government bureaucrats defining what procedures may be used and determining what physicians will be compensated.
I'd suggest two considerations in assessing whether today's runaway costs and inefficiencies are the result of too much government or not enough.
First, we already have massive government involvement in health care. Practically half of all health care delivered today comes directly from government programs -- mainly those begun in the 1960's. Medicare, Medicaid, and then later the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Only 35 percent of health care is paid for through private insurance. Some 87 percent of it is paid for by third parties -- either government or employers. In 1960, 60 percent of Americans' health care expenditures were out of their own pocket. Today it is 12 percent.
So massive growth in health care spending and cost escalation correlates directly with increasing government involvement in this marketplace and decreasing consumer control over their own expenditures. Does this tell you something?
Second, to see government health care at work, we don't need to look at Canada or Great Britain or Cuba. Fifty nine million Americans already have it. It's called Medicaid.
Medicaid was passed in 1965 to cover health care for poor Americans. It is a pure entitlement. If you qualify, you are covered. Government, both federal and state, pays.
Bureaucrats define what is covered and how much physicians will be paid. And, as result, there is a huge gap between being covered and actually getting health care.
On average, 40 percent of physicians won't accept Medicaid patients. They are paid less than what it costs them to provide the care. In a survey done last year by Merritt Hawkins, a healthcare manpower firm, 65 percent of physicians said reimbursements from Medicaid were less than their costs.
Merritt Hawkins did a survey this year of physicians of different specialties in fifteen different cities on acceptance of Medicaid patients. In Washington, D.C., for example, which has the highest incidence of children living in poverty in the country, only 63 percent of surveyed physicians in family practice will accept Medicaid patients.
A federal district appeals court ruled just a few weeks ago, affecting Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, that state Medicaid programs can't be forced to pay if they disagree with a doctor's decision regarding care. In this particular case, Medicaid officials disagreed with the amount of nursing care prescribed by a physician for a teenager who suffers seizures.
A study cited by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a physician and health care expert at the American Enterprise Institute, showed Medicaid patients to be 50 percent more likely to die after heart bypass surgery than patients with private coverage or Medicare.
Move the whole nation onto a new government health care plantation?
No thanks. I'll take freedom and personal responsibility.
(Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org). She can be reached at parker(at)urbancure.org)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
COLUMN
Socialized "medicine" KILLS
Take off your blinders Americans and reject Obama's Fannie Mae Socialized Healthcare.
Britain's National Healthcare System killed my dad.
Ted Kennedy would now be DEAD if he had insisted on using the British government's method for assessing his suitability for treatment.
A fat, 77 year old man with a drink problem would be left to DIE -- as it isn't economically rational to waste precious resources on him.
Think I'm kidding? Sadly I am not.
No Thanks...
The elephant in the living room here is the fact that civil lawsuits have driven health care costs through the roof, and using the civil courts to check medical malpractice has been very bad for self-employed people and others who don't have health insurance.
The way it works is this: An attorney like John Edwards wins a humongous jury award for a bad outcome to a medical proceedure, setting a precedent. All doctors in that field then have their malpractice insurance premiums raised to cover the possibility that they will be sued in a like case. The doctors raise their fees to cover the malpractice insurance. Health insurance companies raise the fees they will pay to doctors, and raise the premiums they charge to employers and individuals they insure. Those who can pay the new prremiums stay in the system. Those who can't, drop out.
Case in point: In the late 1970s, due to a lawsuit, malparactice premiums for Ob-Gyns went from around $25,000 per year to $100,000 per year. This happened suddenly, I think in 1978. Blue Cross fussed about paying the new costs, but they paid them, and raised their premiums to their insureds.
The upshot of this is that health insurance companies are now choosier about whom they will insure as an individual. A man over 50 who has worked for a large company for the past 25 years, but who now starts his own business, finds himself uninsurable. He can't get the most basic policy to cover hospitalization or catastrophic illness, because at his age, he is considered a poor risk--even if he doesn't smoke, drink, and is not obese. If the cost of medical care for him were more affordable to the insurance company, they would write a policy for him. The fact is, for anyone over 50, the possibility of hip replacement looms large, even if the person is not obese, but the uninsured are not going to afford hip replacement. Thus, the quality of life for that man over 50 goes down, possibly putting him out of business, taking his income and spending out of the economy, and causing his death earlier than he would otherwise die. This does not look to me like a good economic decision. But it is current fact.
Remember the lawsuit? That was what drove the decision not to insure the self-employed man over 50. How do we get rid of the lawsuit without letting careless doctors get away with literal(!) murder? I propose criminalizing certain levels of flagrant medical malpractice. And for experimental proceedures and proceedures with higher risk levels, I propose a disclosure contract between the doctor and the patient, and possibly the patient's family, outlining the risks and the precautions to be taken to reduce the risks, and holding the physician harmless if s/he follows all proceedures outlined in the contract. Then the proceedure wouldn't fall under the malpractice case law if it is followed as outlined. And the doctor could charge a lower fee for the proceedure.
Nobama's "Fast Food Health care" bill debacle
Copy of my mesage to Ted Nugent here:
Report Abusive Post
Yes Ted, we must never forget that we have to defend our feeedoms.
To those of you who can't serve on the battle field, like my Dad and brother and brother did in WWII and Viet Nam, there are other ways you can defend your freedom,
#1 Get off your dead asses, and physically VISIT your Congressman and Senator. Be respectful, but you have to go punch for punch in the face with these corrupt weasles, to stop the destructive and outrageous debacle spending that is whithering America's future...
# 2 Remember, you are NOT on a bus, and Gov't is driving it. You do NOT have to just go along to whatever stops they drop you off at. (usualy bad neighborhoods)
YOU are the driver, you have a say in the direction we go. Step up to the wheel, and drive.
# 3 , know what's going on:
The Health Care Bill, will turn Health Care into "Fast Food Healthcare."
You heard it here first.
It will be fast, nicely package, low-grade in and out health care, just like McDonald's or Heartburn Pizza Inc.
It will destroy the biggest jobs engine in the US, the Healthcare industry.
There will be a talent flight like you won't believe. We'll have Mexican Doctors who bought their degrees in Tijuana for 100 pesos..
In their “determined corruption”, Congress wants to really destroy the economy by pushing through this Trillion dollar boondoggle.
There is no “silver lining” in this bill, it is completely wrong-headed.
It is stillborn.
It was born DEAD, it has no life, no purpose, and will kept artificially alive by Congressional fiat, they will pump money and keep ot on life support;
It is a living corpse.
Know what is going on.
If you can't serve on the battlefield, serve on Main street.
Visit your weasle Congressman and your sallow Senator, and defend, motherhubbard, defend your country NOW.
Happy Memorial Day,
Larry