My Country suffers that Irish curse: “May you have all the money in the world but not enough to pay your doctor’s bill.”
This curse hits home here where our per capita medical costs are two times that of other nations and excessive medical costs are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in this country. Of those who are forced into bankruptcy, half of them have health insurance. Our health care funding system is unique among developed nations and so its flaws are evident. We have added a layer of cost on our health care that adds nothing to the service but additional costs and in doing so increases costs throughout our economy.
The first thing that you will notice when you seek health care is the processing of your insurance. The billing staff will confirm you are correctly insured to receive services from the clinic. Out of your health care dollar you first pay to get billed.
Every businessman knows that eliminating unnecessary costs is key to market efficiency; so why do we allow ourselves to be saddled with another industry that’s sole purpose is to make our health care more expensive and thus justify its existence. The medical insurance industry is an experiment that has failed. It has had 70 years to refine its product, and it is still broken. In the early days of the automobile we didn’t choose to subsidize buggy whip manufactures and livery stables owners. We did, however, choose to subsidize roads and infrastructure to support that new industry. Those who are insured are better off than those without for a while until they get really sick then the whole system conspires to financially ruin your family.
Using mandatory insurance will not solve the cost problem either; the insurance will always add a layer of cost on your health care. The idea “that when everybody is required to buy insurance the price will go down” has not happened where auto insurance was made mandatory, and I doubt it will reduce the cost of medical insurance. We will just become customers by mandate.
When you are healthy, your insurance seems to cover anything a reasonable person could expect. It’s when you get seriously ill we find out about the lapses in our coverage, and we always learn it the hard way. If you have a serious disease and you need the latest treatment… well your provider “is very sorry but won’t pay for experimental treatments.” You need two years to rehabilitate, you find again they are very sorry but your provider only pays 80 percent for 90 days and then you are on your own again.
A Single Payer Health Care System doesn’t have those kinds of limits and still costs less.
Why are we reluctant to adopt the Single Payer System? Or more to the point since about 60 percent of Americans want a Single Payer Health Care System why are our politicians reluctant to adopt one? My guess the reason for the reluctance of the politicians to take action on this is fear of the anger at the loss of insurance company jobs. Unfortunately at this time there are many good-paying middle class jobs in the medical insurance industry that would have to be sacrificed to eliminate the medical insurance industry. When we look at what a insurance company does to add costs we can count the jobs that will be unnecessary and how their elimination will result in savings: In order to compete with other companies the insurance company has to advertise. In order to pay its shareholders, the insurance company must make a profit. In order to manage the corporation they need a management team and a board of directors. The insurance company needs lawyers and claim investigators to fight you over your claims. They need policy writers and actuaries; they need billing clerks and accounts payable management and staff. They need to hire lobbyists to maintain the status quo.
Medical insurance increases you cost at the doctor’s office as well; your doctor keeps a full time medical billing employee to confirm your insurance will pay. He also hires a collection company to hound you or your loved ones if you can’t.
The Single Payer System just pays your doctor a salary and you pay one third to one half of your current premium to you tax collector. No money, no billing, no added costs. You are covered from cradle to the grave and on average you will have wider coverage.
The suffering of the former insurance employees will need to be mitigated in order to garner their support for eliminating their livelihood. The cost of making a comfortable transition for middle management on down would be would likely still result in a net savings to taxpayers, so it would be wise to initiate generous employment adjustment and severance packages.
The reduction in costs to all aspects of our economy as a result of lifting this burden could stimulate manufacturing; reduce lawsuit costs, and various types of liability insurance costs. If you don’t pay for medical costs you can’t sue for their reimbursement and then you don’t need to insure against them.
Lets lift this curse of waste and allow our people and our economy relief from the failed experiment of Medical Insurance.
(Quin Harris resides in Houston, Texas.)
Argument For a Single Payer National Health Plan
My Country suffers that Irish curse: “May you have all the money in the world but not enough to pay your doctor’s bill.”
This curse hits home here where our per capita medical costs are two times that of other nations and excessive medical costs are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in this country. Of those who are forced into bankruptcy, half of them have health insurance. Our health care funding system is unique among developed nations and so its flaws are evident. We have added a layer of cost on our health care that adds nothing to the service but additional costs and in doing so increases costs throughout our economy.
The first thing that you will notice when you seek health care is the processing of your insurance. The billing staff will confirm you are correctly insured to receive services from the clinic. Out of your health care dollar you first pay to get billed.
Every businessman knows that eliminating unnecessary costs is key to market efficiency; so why do we allow ourselves to be saddled with another industry that’s sole purpose is to make our health care more expensive and thus justify its existence. The medical insurance industry is an experiment that has failed. It has had 70 years to refine its product, and it is still broken. In the early days of the automobile we didn’t choose to subsidize buggy whip manufactures and livery stables owners. We did, however, choose to subsidize roads and infrastructure to support that new industry. Those who are insured are better off than those without for a while until they get really sick then the whole system conspires to financially ruin your family.
Using mandatory insurance will not solve the cost problem either; the insurance will always add a layer of cost on your health care. The idea “that when everybody is required to buy insurance the price will go down” has not happened where auto insurance was made mandatory, and I doubt it will reduce the cost of medical insurance. We will just become customers by mandate.
When you are healthy, your insurance seems to cover anything a reasonable person could expect. It’s when you get seriously ill we find out about the lapses in our coverage, and we always learn it the hard way. If you have a serious disease and you need the latest treatment… well your provider “is very sorry but won’t pay for experimental treatments.” You need two years to rehabilitate, you find again they are very sorry but your provider only pays 80 percent for 90 days and then you are on your own again.
A Single Payer Health Care System doesn’t have those kinds of limits and still costs less.
Why are we reluctant to adopt the Single Payer System? Or more to the point since about 60 percent of Americans want a Single Payer Health Care System why are our politicians reluctant to adopt one? My guess the reason for the reluctance of the politicians to take action on this is fear of the anger at the loss of insurance company jobs. Unfortunately at this time there are many good-paying middle class jobs in the medical insurance industry that would have to be sacrificed to eliminate the medical insurance industry. When we look at what a insurance company does to add costs we can count the jobs that will be unnecessary and how their elimination will result in savings: In order to compete with other companies the insurance company has to advertise. In order to pay its shareholders, the insurance company must make a profit. In order to manage the corporation they need a management team and a board of directors. The insurance company needs lawyers and claim investigators to fight you over your claims. They need policy writers and actuaries; they need billing clerks and accounts payable management and staff. They need to hire lobbyists to maintain the status quo.
Medical insurance increases you cost at the doctor’s office as well; your doctor keeps a full time medical billing employee to confirm your insurance will pay. He also hires a collection company to hound you or your loved ones if you can’t.
The Single Payer System just pays your doctor a salary and you pay one third to one half of your current premium to you tax collector. No money, no billing, no added costs. You are covered from cradle to the grave and on average you will have wider coverage.
The suffering of the former insurance employees will need to be mitigated in order to garner their support for eliminating their livelihood. The cost of making a comfortable transition for middle management on down would be would likely still result in a net savings to taxpayers, so it would be wise to initiate generous employment adjustment and severance packages.
The reduction in costs to all aspects of our economy as a result of lifting this burden could stimulate manufacturing; reduce lawsuit costs, and various types of liability insurance costs. If you don’t pay for medical costs you can’t sue for their reimbursement and then you don’t need to insure against them.
Lets lift this curse of waste and allow our people and our economy relief from the failed experiment of Medical Insurance.
(Quin Harris resides in Houston, Texas.)