The unholy alliance of stakeholders in the healthcare industry feigned to roll over and cut healthcare costs. It is an alliance of insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, device manufacturers, doctors, the SEIU (a healthcare workers union) and even companies that have the audacity to patent human genes (as if they made them). They say they will slow the rise of healthcare costs by one and half percent per year over then next ten years. They then go on to estimate that will save a total of 2 trillion over ten years.
Very clever wording. Just the type of obfuscation one would expect from those desperately trying to maintain their bottom lines at our expense. Note that they say nothing of cutting costs. They are counting on their clever wording to disguise that what they are really offering is to merely decrease the rate of increase. At that rate, in ten years we will be spending $2.5 trillion dollars on healthcare rather than the already outrageous $1.5 trillion we spend now. Assume their estimate of a 6.2% rise in costs each year and do the math. Lies, damn lies and statistics. It is public relations stunt to give cover to the Congress not to interfere. It is on offer without substance.
Even given the above, the offer rings hollow. It immediately begs the question: why haven’t they done it before. They offer no concrete roadmap to achieve this. They talk in vague terms of the coordination of medical care – read Electronic Medical Record (EMR) – and preventive care. Those of us who practice medicine full well know that the EMR does not save money, it costs money. It might improve medical care as a communication tool to let the various doctors who treat a patient know what the other is doing, but it doesn’t save money. Read most EMRs and there is lots of data but precious little information. The information put in the EMR has to be accurate, concise and not a lot fluff. Right now it is a mechanism to thwart lawyers and submit bills.
Perish the thought of being blunt these days and uttering the unvarnished truth. The truth is that insurance companies and drug companies have raped the American public. They raise premiums and lower coverage all the while expanding their profits. It is nothing less than scandalous. They have usurped the decision making and judgment of the doctor to increase their profits and have managed to escape the responsibility of doing so. Doctors have a choice to expose themselves to vicious lawsuits by unscrupulous trial lawyers if they cave in or being severed from the insurance plans if they fight and resist. The sick are just a vehicle for profit.
We can no longer afford to speak in euphemisms and platitudes for fear of insulting others. The players in the healthcare industry have too long exploited the American public. It is time to change healthcare back to a calling and end its industrialization.
A national health insurance program will save five trillion dollars over ten years from what we are spending now and provide healthcare coverage for every single American. Compare that to the two trillion “decrease in increase” the healthcare players promise to “save”. They won’t save dime, but rather cost us another trillion dollars over ten years.
Here’s the rub: everyone has to pay. The basis of any insurance system is to spread the risk. The real fight is not whose going to be covered, but who is going to pay – because no one wants to. The young don’t want to pay because they don’t get sick, the old don’t want to pay because the feel that they have paid already, the poor don’t want to pay because they say they can’t afford it, the wealthy don’t want to pay because they will pay too much and the employed don’t want to pay because someone else is paying for them.
Times are changing. All these are fallacious arguments. Insurance companies keep up to a quarter of our healthcare premiums. Drug companies charge double the amount to Americans than they do to the rest of the world. Trial lawyers have created a culture of fear in the medical community that drives one tenth of the healthcare dollar into defensive medicine. We have to eliminate the insurance companies, reign in the pharmaceutical industry, create meaningful tort reform and along the way change patent law to recognize that the human gene is not a product but a discovery.
I am not naïve enough to trust one single entity with our healthcare dollar without a countervailing force. The doctor, and by extension the patient, is already arrayed against powerful forces that view your illness as a means of profit. If your illness isn’t profitable, they aren’t interested. Hospitals, insurance companies, device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies all try and control your doctor to increase their profits. While the public perception is of the all powerful doctor, it turns out the doctor has no power at all when arrayed against these forces. In the end, your doctor is your last advocate. Shackle him and you’re lost to the bottom line. Professionals must therefore be allowed to associate to counterbalance a national health insurance agency. The antitrust laws need to be changed.
These are the legs of healthcare reform that must be enacted to reduce costs, cover everyone and get the malignancy of healthcare costs off the back of our economy. Anything less is fluff. It is that profound a change.