On the Contrary

I could recite to you all of the failing marks our health care is getting, but it really doesn’t register until you personally face a medical crisis and you find your health care is gone.  Sadly many Americans are facing that reality as they lose their jobs.  Others are finding out just exactly what their insurance aren’t covering.  Many of my friends have come to the reality that there will be no retirement of any kind until they hit 65 because they will lose their coverage until Medicare kicks in.  Businesses saddled with health care benefits are losing their competitive edge in the world market place.  So the ball is teed up for real change in our health care system, how we pay for it, and who is covered.  Enter the Republicans with their never ending scare tactics.

The current line of scare tactics is that you don’t want the government between you and your doctor.  This is, of course, is their strategy to prevent any form of a single payer system, the single payer being the federal government, you know, like Medicare.  What is so hysterically funny about this is that right now the guy between most of us and our doctor is the insurance companies the Republicans (and some Democrats) are working so hard to protect.  So we would rather have someone whose primary task is not your health, but profit for the stockholders, than the government whose elected representatives are answerable to their citizens?

The other scare tactic is that people in Europe and Canada have horrible care and patients have to wait forever for their care.  This is not true of course and their waiting times are comparable to ours, and oh by the way, they have better outcomes than we do.  Oh did I mention that all their citizens get care?  No they are not perfect and each system, and there are many as opposed to some monolithic government health care system the Republicans try to portray them as, have their own problems.  But if they were so bad, what are the Republicans so afraid of by allowing a single payer system along side the usual suspects of private insurers?

Well one argument is that the competition won’t be fair because the government system is so large that it can negotiate unfairly and have lower rates.  This is a bogus argument because they could just put in the law that the rates for services/drugs the government system enjoys has to be available to everyone.  The reality is that the private insurers will never be competitive because of their overhead costs to do what they do best, deny claims and cherry pick members.  It is a for-profit business after all and the business model is lots of enrollees and few payouts.

Remember that like Medicare, doctors and hospitals are still private enterprises that compete with each other for patients and the only difference is who pays the claims. The free enterprise system for medicine did not go away, it would just simplify the paper work and get rid of the middleman.  But I actually am in a single payer system that I am very satisfied with.  I am retired from the federal government and my health care is provided by Kaiser Permanente, an HMO.  So the federal government pays for some of my health care and I pay for the rest.  And there is the model for the future.

If you are afraid that the federal government will limit services or limit payments so that there is a waiting line, or certain procedures are not available, think about this model.  Providers (private companies) would provide a certain level of services based upon a basic single payer system (the federal government), and if you wanted more, you could contribute to the plan.  Each plan or provider would then be in competition for providing the most services under the government system, and making their extras more cost effective than their competitors to attract enrollees.  Would this not be the best of both worlds?

I am sure there are holes in my plan, but at least it is an idea outside the box of the status quo the Republicans seem so dedicated to protect.  Just what are the Republican’s offering as an alternative?  My point exactly. The real question is whether Washington will represent what the majority of people now see as the way forward, or like banking reform, they are owned by the insurance companies.