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Healthcare fumble pending

Contributed by: Donna Feldman on 8/1/2007

A friend recently took a roadtrip south, to New Mexico, hitting well-known tourist destinations, where the real American Public lurks. The American Public that is 60% overweight. She was horrified. I, of course, had been telling her for years about the growing problem with obesity and healthcare costs, but living in Colorado, she didn't notice any crisis and thought I was nuts. Now she knows better.

Unfortunately, Colorado's obesity rate is catching up to the rest of the country. No surprise, healthcare costs are spiraling out of control thanks to the astronomical increase in expensive lifestyle diseases. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, arthritis, sleep apnea, reflux and many cancers could be prevented or ameliorated by weight loss, exercise and proper diet. But those require self-restraint and self-discipline, which are not considered viable solutions to health problems. Instead, the solutions are supposed to come from the healthcare system, in the form of expensive prescription drugs (for the rest of your life), tests, procedures and surgical interventions.

How to pay for this? Colorado's very own Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform says everyone is entitled to cheap, or free, healthcare for whatever ails them, including all the expensive lifestyle diseases that account for the vast majority of healthcare costs. The Rocky reports today (8/1/07: p. A7) that The Lewin Group, inside-the-box-health-care consultants, recommends funding a free lunch healthcare system by taxing "sins". Here are some of sins: wine, coffee, "salty" foods - such as what? Pickles? Sauerkraut? Prosciutto? How about pricey sea salt - that's salty. Wine and coffee are sins? Let's see, both have documented health benefits. No sin there. And people in France, Spain, Greece and Italy consume plenty of both and have much lower healthcare costs. Or do the health care consultants themselves have sniffy, judgmental attitudes about foods and beverages that people enjoy.

Of course, the bigger picture here, always missed by health care consultants, is that any system based on the same old 1940's concept of employer-sponsored healthcare is DOOMED TO FAILURE. Do we use rotary phones? Do we drive Model T Fords? Do we burn leaded gasoline? Do we play vinyl 78's on a gramaphone? No we do not. Is anyone trying to resurrect these for mass use? No. Why then is anyone still trying to prop up a 1940's system of health care financing? These people really need to get with the 21st Century.

A few months ago I got one of those snarky letters from our health insurance company. "Is this person covered by any other health insurance plan? Please respond by the due date or we will not cover this procedure." Of course, this health plan is employer-sponsored. We have no choice but to use this plan. And when you use the employer-sponsored plan, you are NOT the customer. The employer is the customer. Your individual complaints and concerns are ignored. So insurance companies can send out these nasty letters, which have no purpose except stalling on payment in the hope that you will forget to respond, and they can deny payment. Have I ever received a letter like that from my auto insurance company? No, never. Because if I did, they would be history in 5 minutes. We all have individual choice in auto insurance, home insurance, in everything but health insurance.

The only system that is going to work is one that puts the responsibility for health insurance purchases, and personal health decisions on the individual. Employer-based health insurance should be abolished. Get rid of it. Then mandate that everyone has a personal health insurance policy, and let insurance companies start competing on price and packages. Think that would be expensive? Think again. Once real competition and marketing kicks in, prices will come down. Employers will have money freed up to pay to employees as salary, instead of to insurance companies and benefit management companies and paper-pushing clerks. Make health policy premiums tax deductible, up to some generous maximum.

What about people who can't, or won't, buy their own plan? Fund a state-sponsored, bare-bones plan. Anyone who shows up at a medical facility without insurance is immediately enrolled in the state plan. They get the kind of care any state-sponsored system can provide (see England--long waits, generic drugs, denial of some services). How to fund that? Let's tax the real culprit here in the explosion of lifestyle diseases - the car.


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Showing 1 of 1 comments
Submitted By: Eva Kosinski
posted on 8/3/2007 @ 10:24:47 AM
Rated Story
Thank you ! This business of who is the customer is one of the critical things folks have to start thinking about. We assume if WE don't have to do it, it will get done right by someone else, but if that someone else is the employer, who might be having a cash flow crises, our benefits get cut. We are entirely too willing (or too lazy) to look out for our own interests. Then of course, we would have nobody to blame but ourselves if we guess wrong, but at least we'd be far more in control than we are now.
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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Donna Feldman

Louisville , CO

Donna Feldman has posted 129 stories and 1 comment since joining on 9/14/2005. Donna Feldman 's average story rating is 4.9.
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