One day after the election, concerns over what exactly Obama can do regarding health services industry have surfaced. http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A4BKX20081105 on November 5 reports they don't know what Obama can do in the health services arena.
Here we plead for two things: 1. Stop busying us with stuff that doesn't work, specifically singling out certain groups for band aid assistance such as state children's health insurance plans, medicare and medicaid and start addressing the root causes of the health services problem: Too little health insurance coverage for too much money for care that is too expensive and often includes unnecessary testing and treatment that qualifies as defensive medicine.
a)Suspend taxpayer financing of government employee civilian health benefits, they are outrageously disparate to the choices the rest of us must wrestle with. This suspension is not punitive but would accomplish two things: First, start reining in the ridiculous expenses associated with taxpayer funding of such health plans when taxpayers themselves are doing without and Second, governmental employees would start having some skin in the game and would have a greater incentive to address the real issues that are depriving people of medical services because they're being priced out of the market.
b) regarding "preventive" care: Yes it's important, but stop using it as a catchall phrase for improvement of our health services industry. Preventive care is something that benefits insureds in terms of early diagnosis AND IT BENEFITS INSURERS who pay less for healthier insureds. However, preventive has been used as a weak substitute of what people "get" from their policies.
Most people would trade the cost of a mammogram for the ability to rely on complete coverage for medical care if that mammogram showed a problem. Substituting the finite cost (therefore, the non-insurance cost since insurance is supposed to cover RISK) for coverage of the risk of having to pay for medical treatment has bankrupted more citizens than we can count. People are not bankrupted by the COST of preventive testing, they are bankrupted by the high cost of health insurance that ends up failing to provide sufficient coverage for needed medical care.
c) All the CHIP programs and SCHIP programs are a waste of money. Yup, I said it. Children will be covered if their parents can obtain family medical insurance at an affordable rate. Most other services children need from inoculations to anti biotics can be covered by Health departments. You want to get rid of government control, stop the nonsense of selling government handouts by using "the children" as a sales pitch.
I fear that Obama will distract us with more money, time and bureaucratic "reporting" about red herrings that are rampant in the health services industry. The problem is cost to the consumer of health insurance and health care. No prior developments reducing those costs have worked, if a test goes down in price, another is added as defensive medicine is now viewed as a legitimate use of consumer dollars. If physicians hire physicians assistants who help them see more patients for a lower cost (physician assistants don't earn the same as doctors), these savings ARE NOT passed onto the consumer, instead they tell us we pay for the service not the service provider. Excuse me, if I have a housekeeper fix my leaky faucet I don't pay her for a plumber's house call. Insurance companies have NOT passed on the profits they've earned onto the consumer but to their shareholders, to salaries, to the expansion of their businesses. According to the insurance industry themselves less than 50% of every dollar paid by consumers goes to paying for medical care for that consumer.
2. In going "electronic", stop rewarding doctors that participate in this and require them to ante up and comply with electronic requirements or face penalties, instead of the wishy washy step of leaving such steps as optional but, at least as far as the Medicare system goes, offering financial incentives for electronic progress.
And a big financial savings would come from getting rid of HIPAA and all of its associated expenses. In terms of consumer privacy it has failed, in terms of enforcement it has failed. (More on HIPAA soon)
