We need to separate health care from health insurance. And we probably need to separate “preventative and general” health care from “catastrophic” health care. We have to do that with regulation, since it is the insurance companies who perpetrated the crime of packaging on us in the first place. And we need to reflect the cost of these three items directly to the consumer, instead of hiding it in tax benefits for mega-employers who buy cadillac plans from defrauding “actuaries.”
We probably need to regulate this industry as if it were a monopoly. Once upon a time, we were spread out all across this country, and that allowed for local communities to directly regulate the cost of care and administration, simply through their neighborly influence. But now most of us are concentrated in urban centers, and those that are not are spread far and wide in the smallest of groups. We need large, centralized entities to do that administration. It’s probably true that this administrative component has perfect economies of scale, meaning that having a single entity is the most efficient way. It’s also definitely true that medical technology has changed drastically, wonder drugs, micro- and nano-surgery, and imaging advances being the most well known. These technologies are highly capital intensive. Perfect economies of scale and capital intensive industries lead naturally to monopolies, which require regulation.
I haven’t read the health care bill. It’s 2000 pages, so I am sure it is full of concessions and full of pork. But it contains 2 critical tenets, requirements it makes of the insurance companies. They are universal access regardless of context, and limiting profits and administrative and marketing costs to 15% of revenues. That is exactly what a regulated monopoly would look like. It’s what utilities look like now.
Take a close look at what the insurance companies are fighting in that bill, and you’ll see that it’s these 2 tenets. And take a close look at the politicians who want to repeal these aspects of the bill. These Corporatists want to replace them with “so-called free market” ideas that actually take away what little leverage consumers still have, while giving insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital oligopolies total control of the market.
I’ve said before that Democrats can’t add.
This week, Obama tried to convince people that if the healthcare bill passed, their employer’s premiums would decrease by 3000% and that would allow their employers to give them raises.
Huh? A company that pays $1,000 in insurance premiums is now going to save $29,000? Where the heck is that $29,000 coming from? Maybe insurance companies are going to start paying employers?
I don’t know what bothers me more… the fact that Obama said something so stupid or the fact that the audience believed it.
You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.
Nancy Pelosi in a press conference on January 28, 2010
You go, girl. You’re doing more damage to your party than the Republicans could ever hope for. I fully support your right to open your mouth and spew as much nonsense as you can if it means you won’t be sitting in that seat next January.
According to Dr. Barbara Starfield, health care professionals in the US are responsible for 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes, making doctors, nurses and hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death behind cancer and cardiovascular diseases. That doesn’t include the number of patients who simply experience complications stemming from poor decisions made by care providers, resulting in more physician visits, more prescriptions, more emergency room visits, more hospitalizations, more long-term visits and even more deaths — all adding up to an additional $77 billion in unnecessary expense.
The United States came close to ranking dead last out of health indicators measured for 16 countries… and further studies show that the poor rating can’t be correlated to bad health habits or lack of technology.
Introducing another 40 to 50 million people into a health care system that’s already struggling is a recipe for disaster. You want to redistribute wealth? Find a way to recover that $77 billion and put it to better use.
References
If Obama and Congress succeed at implementing public health care — which is basically government-subsidized health insurance — will the companies participating in the program be subject to the same antitrust regulations as other public companies?
If the answer is no, then Congress is blatantly side-stepping the law. If the answer is yes, then public health care is dead before it starts.
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