Can you imagine Newt Gingrich and John Kerry getting together regarding any topic? I couldn’t until I saw an oped article in the NY Times on how to improve US health care.
It’s not like Gingrich is coming out for socialized medicine, but he, along with John Kerry and Billy Beane, cared enough to recognize a need to improve one of America’s most critical needs – a more efficient and inclusive health care system.
Health care didn’t turn into a critical mass during LBJ’s Great Society time, but it has since then. Its growing need came during the leadership of right-wing politicians, and early on, Richard Nixon put health care in the hands of private Health Maintenance Organizations, what we call HMOs.
Since then business interests have become too heavily entrenched for any one-payer, low-cost solution to be considered. The last real effort was the Clinton plan in 1993 which was rudely rebuffed, mostly by a negative health-care industry propaganda campaign, and it is still poised to attack.
Today, four publicly traded corporations -- WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc., and Cigna Corp. -- dominate the market, covering more than 85 million people, or almost half of all Americans with private insurance.
The LA Times reported their revenues in 2007 as: WellPoint, $55.9 billion; UnitedHealth, $68.8 billion; Cigna, $8.7 billion; And Aetna, $23.5 billion. UnitedHealth, for one, has earned about a billion per quarter. The four have a combined $157 billion worth of revenue muscle.
Accordingly, health care business and drug company lobbyists dominate Washington. To guard profit, health care corporations exclude those with chronic conditions, like asthma and diabetes. The companies lobby governments to take over responsibility for their sickest customers, whom they routinely discard.
Is it no wonder that politicians are submissive toward the big-business healthcare system, and openly non-committal to any efficient one-payer system? In effect, the big providers and drug companies have poisoned the waters of a one-payer government system.
So naturally when I read the NY Times oped, “How to Take American Health Care from Worst to First,” and got excited by the idea, the name Newt Gingrich as a shared writing source floored me.
Before anybody gets too excited about right-wing support for an efficient one-payer system, forget it. Newt purportedly supports a health care application of a data-driven information system used by some major league baseball clubs, most notably The Tampa Bay Rays, who have the second-lowest baseball payroll and are in the World Series now.
Believe it or not, studies show that most health care is not based on clinical studies of what works best and what does not — be it a test, treatment, drug or technology. Instead, most care is based on informed opinion, personal observation, what private insurance will pay for, or tradition.
Accordingly, a doctor can get more data on the starting third baseman of his fantasy baseball team than on the efficacy of life-and-death medical procedures. Statisticians now routinely use data to put better teams on the field for less money. Our health care provider attention seems to be on denying expensive procedures.
In 2005, the US spent over 15 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care, compared to 10 percent or less for other major countries, including Britain, Canada, Germany and France. But looking at major performance criteria, the US isn’t even in the playoffs.
In 2006, Life expectancy for males and females are higher in the UK, France and Canada. Infant mortality rates, deaths/1000, is 7 in the US, and 5 or lower in these three countries. It could well be that the uninsured, some 46 million, and the underinsured, drag down these statistics, if that is relevant.
Top this off with the fact that, according to a recent LA Times report, 31 percent of American health care costs go for administrative expenses.
There is probably little that can be done about tossing away 31 percent on administrative costs, apart from instituting a one-payer government system, something health care forces would fight tooth and nail against. Contrast our private health care system with a highly successful government Medicare system, which spends 5.2% for administrative costs.
An example of one of the oped success stories involved evidence that corticosteroids improved the lung function of premature babies. The use of corticosteroids tripled and there was a 10% drop in deaths of low-birth-weight babies and a marked drop in expenditures for such critical care.
Couple better utilized medical information with a universal system, and you give your human resources as much priority as property. That would save money and lives.
Health care is a right that every American citizen should have. Others have this right, including France, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
There is no excuse for Americans to go bankrupt because of illness. We cannot justify a man without insurance choosing not to reattach a severed thumb because of an unaffordable cost, or a family choosing to pay the mortgage rather than family health insurance coverage, often costing over $1000 a month for a family.
My anger rises when I hear these stories. Doesn’t yours?
Recent Comments