Do Americans get it, the real nature of the health care problem in America? Probably not as evidenced by this letter to the editor of the New York Times.
To the Editor:
In this corrupted bill every citizen is compromised. We asked for health care reform free of those rapacious insurance industry practices that have plagued our health and welfare for decades. Instead we watched helplessly as special interests contorted the proposed bill into health insurance reform that codified the very practices we wished to stop.
It victimizes the poor and punishes the middle class and taxes those lucky few who actually have reasonable insurance coverage. It’s a blatant act of theft, where our tax dollars and our premiums will vanish into a system that has no intent to insure our health or cover our medical costs or guarantee that we will have access to medical services.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the bill was “a monstrosity full of special sweetheart deals.” He was right. Unfortunately, Congress loves industry more than it does its constituents.
Sadly, even our president will go along with this underhandedness. It seems that he still has his audacity but has taken away our hope. I’m left bereft as I watch the radical agenda of big business finish reshaping America into an impoverished and broken version of our founding fathers’ dreams.
John Thomas Ellis
Kentfield, Calif., Dec. 20, 2009
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
I wrote that letter in 2009. It’s 2012 and everything I said turned out to be true. Insurance companies are limiting access to our healthcare, raising premiums and cutting payouts to doctors. Now, those same forces are asking us to turn medicare and social security over to them. I believe that the founding fathers built our government for the common good of all Americans. Privatizing healthcare, medicare and social security doesn’t secure anything for the average American other than larger bills and fees.
If we continue down this road family will be on their own when a relative becomes sick or injured and cannot take care of themselves. How many of us care should another dependent, especially one with special needs, on our already overburdened shoulders without some kind of safety net?
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First, insurance companies do not limit access to health care. Even if they deny payment for a certain procedure, that is not denying access any more than Medicare’s refusal to pay for acupuncture is denying access to that care. It means you must pay for it yourself.
As far as raising premiums goes, of course they raise premiums as the cost and utilization increases so do premiums. Health care costs are the drivers of premiums. New mandates under Obamacare increase premiums further. Medicare costs increase for the same reasons.
Cutting payments to doctors; who does that more or to such a degree than Medicare and Medicaid? Insurers negotiate fees, Medicare and Medicaid set fees thereby shifting more costs to insurers and as a result increasing premiums.
How do you propose controlling health care costs unless we spend less on health care by both lower utilization and paying less for each service obtained? Mostly though by better managing utilization.
Over 25% of Medicare beneficiaries have voluntarily enrolled in private health plans under Part C and apparently are satisfied with the value received and the restrictions that are necessary to provide that value.
There is no magic bullet because health care is under the government. The bureauocracy and it’s costs, the fraud and abuse that comes from inadequate oversight more than offset the profit of a private insurer.
And if you think the government can control costs simply by saying it will pay less to providers, consider what our health care system would look like if Medicare level fees were all that was paid.
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Private heath insurance is illegal in most industrial nations around the world and there are good reasons that it is done that way.
Putting an unregulated profit making company in charge of dispensing our health care dollars is the worst way to manage costs and manage utilization. The goal of any profitable company is to make more and more money year after year and that makes them poisonous guardians of our health care system. Most democracies have recognized the jeopardy privately funded health insurance poses. Today we’re told that it’s reasonable to pay a C.E.O. $1 billion dollars a year in salary just to get the ball rolling and it only get worse and goes downhill from there.
The astronomical costs of the medical serves that we must pay as patients are negotiated privately between the insurance companies and the heath-care providers, like hospitals, HMO’s, Pharmaceutical companies and device makers. The endemic corruption is best shown, when you look and what other nations in the world are charged by the same companies for the same exact products. If you don’t believe me check out what your local veterinarian pays for the same medical supplies your doctor uses and they usually get them from the same distributors, too.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching a government run health care system. Please, anything but that. I’m asking that we get the corruption of private insurers out of our health care system. That we use a single payer system that’s transparent and fair like Medicare
If, we lock-box the premiums the system will turn a profit. Medicare for all was one of the promises our current president floated, when he was first running for the office. In my letter to the New York Times, May 20, 2009 I was furious that we were betrayed. Most of us voted for heath care reforms and got higher premiums in return. I hope that everyone agree on two things. We all deserve good health care and we’re one of the richest nations in the world.
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Interesting perspective, but you are not correct. Private supplemental insurance is common in many countries with single payer plans. That’s how they help with the limitations that must be imposed by the government programs.
Also, CEO salaries and indeed insurance company profits, which are well in line with other organizations even regulated utilities, are a very small part of premiums.
More significant in all this is the patient and his insulation from true costs. However, to replace that means something different, it means more managed care and more central control which is exactly what is on the way for Medicare.
The idea that the problem is insurance and the private system is wrong and simply diverts us from the fundamental issues.
Dick
Richard D Quinn
Blog http://www.quinnscommentary.com Twitter @quinnscomments
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PS Medicare is hardly transparent. Look at your next EOB and see the difference between fee charged and allowed. Who pays the difference? What is the real cost of the services provided? Could Medicare impose fees as it does without the private sector absorbing the difference? What are the consequences of merely paying all providers Medicare fees all the time?
Dick
Richard D Quinn
Blog http://www.quinnscommentary.com Twitter @quinnscomments
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