Heirs of Liberty Press

Health Share Unraveled

Marsha Nylund, Columnist / Reporter

So, you think U.S. healthcare is in bad shape and needs some politician's€™ tweaks?

Free-market healthcare has been marginalized by government intrusion for years because of the Medicare program. Insurance companies have BEEN calling the shots on price, duration of hospital stay and what treatments are insured since 1983. A conspicuously world-wide use of DRGs (Diagnosis Related Groups) to predetermine prices (NOT actual cost) was implemented for Medicare patients in the U.S. that year. Naturally, that power spread very quickly to the general public.

Nothing controls pricing better than good old-fashioned competition. People choosing affordable insurance and medical treatment would dictate lowest possible price not predetermined false amounts but what care actually costs according to what people choose to pay and can pay. Medicine is as necessary to life as food. We shop around for good deals and choose our favorite store accordingly. Thus, a grocer cannot radically raise prices; it is retail suicide. Why have hospital and doctor prices leapt up (besides invasive trial-lawyers)? There is no shopping around for a better price. There is no competition and rates are set by God knows who!

The question of the day: Will government’s further involvement correct this powerless free-fall into disaster? Can a problem be solved with more of the same? Key to remember before you answer: Today's medicine isn'€™t the medical coverage we once knew and loved because the U.S. Government has been interfering since the Great Society's Medicare and Medicaid passage.

But the people LOVE promises.

Dreamy dream #1

Everybody will get health insurance AND medical care. But medical care is already available to EVEN non-citizens and the poor citizenry alike. Programs are in place and going broke as you read. The money for Universal, National, Socialized health insurance for a family of four making $87,999 will be generated by some government entity. In my real life experience on committees, spending money comes easy when it isn'€™t your own. At the other end, there will be no hesitation to get every little ache, pain, sneeze, and sniffle checked out. €œIt's FREE!

Dreamy dream #2

Low income (below poverty level, as above mentioned) families get help paying their insurance premiums, which summons two problems to mind. Employers and middle to upper class folks get the bill. Yes, I know many of our fellow voters like that idea, begging articles and letters like this one. Problem two: Tax dollars are the last bank to fail while officials trust they are growing in our backyards, with a new harvest every April. Therefore, there will be no lid on the price of those premiums. Actual market price goes out the window very much like government funded higher education. Prices go up because they CAN. Cost becomes irrelevant because it is all about what we can get€. It is naive to think health and insurance providers won't go there. They already have to some degree. Reported May 16, 2009 in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review: UPMC President receives 4.5 million last year in benefits and salary.

Dreamy dream #3

Government will rein in costs! No one can afford a long term hospital stay and only a few can even manage one day, without insurance. Here's the twist. If it actually costs the hospital what they say it does for your treatment, then what happens when they don't get reimbursed, like they already aren't because of DRGs. It ain't pretty. Quality declines. Scenario 2, if the price has been inflated falsely by the "free money" syndrome and big DC Daddy demands affordability while pumping in "€œfree money."

You figure it out my brain hurts. May 15th Tribune AP report says the expansion of the system will cost $634B over ten years, brought to you by both tax increases and forced lower prices from providers: pharmaceuticals, doctors, and hospitals. More money from heaven while insisting on spending cuts. Have you tried that with your kids lately? Hand em twenty and see what you get back. Meantime, there are strings because parents can do that. Come home drunk and teenage son or daughter doesn't get another dime.

Behavior control: great in the home, dangerous in a country. Federal mandates abound in this free-market- snuffing National Health Plan, by the way. Think abortion coverage. So what happens to the greatest research development and medical treatment the world has ever known when suddenly, adult professionals are threatened by an over-bearing parental government? Resentment, rebellion, lost incentive when the payroll is capped, to name a few. WE WERE ALL TEENAGERS ONCE! Remember, "GET OFF MY BACK!" One nifty idea comes out of the Healthy Americans Act. Drop corporate health insurance plans in favor of individually owned ones which would move with the employee at job changes, bringing back healthier competition. Oh yes, less IS more.