What Is It Going to Take To Reform Health Care
The current Health Care debate has divided Americans amongst partisan lines more than any other subject in 2009. This debate continues in 2010. It is a debate that has seen accusations ranging from death panel’s to an entire government takeover of Health Care. It seems as though this problem is not going to be solved until a majority of Americans realize the effect that an efficient Health Care System is causing to our people and our economy.
We saw in the recent news that healthcare premiums in California have been increased by a particular insurance company by an average of 39%. In Maine premiums have rose by an average of 25%. However, these numbers are not enough to convince the American people at large that Health Care needs to be reformed. The reason for this is that the true costs of an inefficient Healthcare System is not directly associated with our current economic and social problems.
Insufficient Health Care coverage kills over 40,000 Americans a year. That is more than 10 – 9/11 attacks per year. The current antitrust exemption that the healthcare industry enjoys allows them to monopolize coverage by state, and because you cannot buy insurance over state lines, if you do not like the healthcare company that has monopolized your State you’re out of luck. Due to the ever increasing costs of Health Care coverage in the employer based system companies are not hiring a nearly as many employees as they would it if healthcare costs were not going up by an average of 15% per year. Even if you have been paying your insurance premiums and kept your insurance current throughout your entire life, once you do get sick insurance companies can cap the amount they pay out or deny your coverage completely because they’ve gone through your medical history and found something like chicken pox, called it a pre-existing condition, and deny your claim. Let’s look at these issues one by one.
There are over 40,000 people a year that die from insufficient Health Care coverage. Many of these individuals end go to the emergency room towards the end of their life because they have no other option left. Emergency room costs are some of the most expensive in the industry. Due to the fact that these individuals do not have insurance these costs are passed on to those who do. Therefore, if we were to implement a Healthcare System that covered these individuals it would bring down the cost for everyone. Not to mention the fact that we would be saving potentially more than 40,000 people’s lives a year that the insurance companies would otherwise let die.
The current laws guiding the Healthcare System are insufficient, out of date, and the biggest contributor the atrocities of our system. Simply put, the insurance companies are getting away with anything and everything they can. For example, let’s look at California. If you lived in California and your car insurance went up by 39% you would just go to another car insurance company. Health Care Insurers do not have to worry about this. They have a trust exception. This allows them to divide up the country and monopolize the market State by State. If you look at the market share of your state, over 80% will be controlled by one insurance company, and because you cannot buy insurance over state lines if you don’t like what you have, if you don’t like your premiums going up by 39%, you are basically out of luck.
In the year 2000 Health Care premiums for a family of 4 cost $6,000. By 2008 Health Care premiums rose to over $12,000. If this is the rate of the increases for premiums imagine what the increase in the overall costs are for employers. If healthcare costs are rising 100% every eight years, depending on the overall operating budget of the employer, companies are able to hire anywhere from 10% to 99.9% less employees, because the money that would normally be going to payroll is now going to the insurance companies.
Even if you have done all the right things and you have had insurance your entire life when you finally do get sick the insurance companies are able to cap the amount of they pay out for your Health Care costs. So if you get Cancer and your treatment cost $200,000 but your insurance company caps your pay out at $100,000, you had better either have another $100,000 or you’re going bankrupt. For many people this situation would be preferable to there’s because the insurance companies have told them that they’re not going to get a dime due to a preexisting condition. There are thousands of stories out there about people who have become sick and then been turned away by their insurance company due to a “pre-existing condition” not previously identified. These pre-existing conditions range from chickenpox to pregnancies, but they are nothing more than an excuse for insurance companies to deny coverage, allow people to die, and increase their profit margins.
The insurance companies, their lobbyists, and the politicians they have in their pockets have divided this country over an issue that should be simple to discuss and much easier to solve than they would have us believe. The They have divided us with lies about things like death panels and a government takeover of Health Care. They have divided the country by the people that have insurance and the people that don’t. They have told the people that have insurance that Health Care is going to be taken over by the government, when in the current Senate and House bills there’s no public option, therefore, there’s no government option, therefore, there is no government takeover of Health Care.
The simple fact of the matter seems to be a that the Healthcare System will not be reformed until a majority of Americans realizes benefit on all levels to all people. This reform is not as difficult as it may seem. If there were an individual bill proposed for each issue of the Health Care debate it would be able to be passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president much quicker and more efficiently. Propose a bill that ends the insurance companies antitrust exemption. Propose a bill that allows individuals to buy insurance across state lines. Propose a bill that creates a public exchange employees can go to if the insurance companies continue to increase the rates exponentially of their employers. Propose a bill that eliminates the caps insurance companies can place on their healthcare coverage payouts, and for crying out loud, propose a bill that makes it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions.
We as a people have allowed this issue to divide us. We allowed the pawns of the insurance companies to make us fight each other over the true problem instead of fighting the true problem itself. The problem is our Healthcare System and if we do not reform it we will continue to be crippled economically and socially. If we take this problem piece by piece, bill by bill, and eliminate these problems one by one, we can reform Health Care. Any politician or lobbyist who is against a bill, for example, to remove the caps insurance payouts, will have the answer for it. They will have to answer for it. They will no longer be able to play politics and denounce an entire, in-depth, wide-ranging, reform bill as a government takeover of Health Care. Politicians will finally have to explain why they’re against reform of “specific” problems of the Health Care industry that effects every one of their constituents.
No matter what we as a people have to come together. We have to stop fighting each other over small nonexistent issues and let those who represent us know that we want specific reform in the healthcare industry and we want it now stopped dictation.
Written By: Rob Gelhausen