They're Not Serious

They’re not serious in Washington. Just so we understand each other, I am very much for an overhaul of the USA’s health care system. I’ve paid huge amounts for insurance. I’ve fought those companies for coverage. I’ve been left without insurance after losing a job. I’ve lost a lot to medical costs.

I’ve been classified as “uninsurable.” For those of you who don’t know, that means that no company will insure you no matter how much you might be willing to pay. The various “extensions” required by law operate in a very small window of time in which most won’t be able to meet the very high costs. If you lose insurance after 55 and before Medicare, you’ll likely fall into this group. The list of things they’ll refuse on is the litany of what’s wrong with most of us after middle age.

We have “rationing” on the basis of cost already. When Jeannie got sick, her regular physicians disappeared (they would only practice at the private hospital, not the Monterey County hospital). No one can convince me that any so-called “socialized” system would be any worse than what we have. But in Washington, they aren’t serious. First, they are politically afraid (or too closely aligned) to take on an out-of-control private health care insurance industry that “cherry picks” the risks, leaving the sick outside the system to fend for themselves.

Second, Congress (the largest concentration of lawyers outside of “Boston Legal” and just as funny) refuses to touch the windfall of out-of-control malpractice legal actions. It’s not just “bloated awards,” it’s thousands upon thousands of nuisance suits that are cheaper to settle than to defend. Like the obstetrician sued over stretch marks. (One of those “believe it or not” things.) It's not even in question that doctors are forced to practice “defensive medicine” giving nearly endless and expensive "just in case" tests to stay out of court. The cost of treatment can’t fall while that’s the case, whatever Obama’s nonsense about reducing “waste and inefficiency.” (I spent most of my working life dealing with those issues in organizations public and private, including implementing computer systems to support greater efficiency. I can tell you flat out that it’s unlikely to return anything near the hype, it will take huge up-front investment, and the returns will take years to materialize.) If "corruption, waste, and inefficiency" in Medicare and Medicaid is so rampant, why hasn't this administration made it a priority to root it out? I'm forced to conclude it isn't there, at least not to the extent the president claims to justify the laughable idea that we can deliver his idea of "insurance reform" for free.

Further, there is the direct cost of malpractice insurance. (There they are again.) In Florida, not atypical, physicians in general practice pay $50,000 per year in insurance premiums. Think about that. $50,000. Add to that office costs, continuing training and education requirements, medical and office equipment, a nursing staff, and administrative staff. All that paid by you when you walk in the door for your ten minutes with the nice guy (or gal) in the white coat. Of course it’s expensive. What if that malpractice-suit-associated cost were to drop, even just half, to something “reasonable,” like $25,000 per year? It’s the ONLY cost that really could be immediately reduced by laws clamping down on frivolous suits and by capping bloated awards. The lawyers, not the injured patients get most of the money anyway.But the Congress and the President refuse to touch any of that.

Like I said. Not serious.

(It goes on and on. Our drug costs pay for the research for the whole globe - while other countries cap those costs, legislation has even prohibited our government from negotiating lower drug costs. So the American consumer picks up the lion's share of the tab for everyone else. See? Not serious.)