health WHAT reform?

I came across two different articles recently that clarified a little more for me a large problem I have with the health care reform proposals currently being shopped around ...

I point out that both authors are Democrats because I think it's important to note that this is not a Republican vs. Democrat cut-and-dry split. There are many Democrats who think that the Pelosi bill is a piece of junk ... although I'm sure that they'd get condemned for being "sell-outs" to the Republicans and insurance companies, just like all the senior citizens cramming the town halls all month. You really can't make this stuff up.

Washington Post: Paging Dr. Reform, Aug. 20, David Ignatius (Democrat).

Ignatius believes that if we're going to reform the medical system, how about we listen to the medical professionals instead of politicians. Crazy, huh? He cites the CEO of the Mayo Clinic, who says that Obama has made the mistake of focusing on health insurance reform when what we really need is health system reform.

Imposing a mandate for universal insurance will only make things worse if we don't change the process so that it becomes more efficient and less costly. The system we have is gradually bankrupting the country; expanding that system without changing the internal dynamics is folly.

DING DING DING! My problem going way back to when I first started writing about this subject - the idea of requiring, under penalty of fines, every adult in the country to buy health insurance. For all the griping Democrats and other health care reform advocates do about the insurance companies ... why on earth would you expand that disaster even further by requiring everyone to buy into it? HELLO!

Second, the Mayo Clinic CEO points out that we already have a public health care option. In fact, we have SIX public health care options. So for all the hysteria about whether or not we're going to have one, or should have one ... we already do! Medicare, anyone? All of the seniors in the town halls yelling, "Keep the government away from my Medicare" ... Got news for ya. Medicare IS the government! You're already on the horror of a public health care plan, where they have "health care rationing" because there aren't enough doctors to go around! That program is the problem!

Anyway, Mr. CEO suggests that we fix the public health care programs we already have before reinventing the wheel with yet another public option.

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The Atlantic: How American Health Care Killed My Father, September issue, David Goldhill (Democrat).

This is a very, very, long but extremely thought-provoking article. I read the entire thing 3 times and I'm not going to review the whole thing. Just a couple of things from it:

This author, like the Mayo CEO, also believes that the problem with the current bills is that they focus on health insurance reform rather than health system reform. The insurance companies are actually a relatively recent addition to the system and they're damaging in that they make people disregard the actual cost of things. "Well, I don't have to pay for ___, so I'll do whatever I want in the medical system" with tests and exams and all. Well, someone is paying it. Just because it's not you doesn't mean that there's no cost. We all end up paying through the nose with insurance premiums and taxes to support the astronomical costs of the public programs.

What I mainly see in the discussion of the legislation is that on the tax-payer dime, the Democrats want to provide all Americans with health insurance. If the problem of cost is the health insurance industry in general, why on earth would we be expanding that part of the medical system to include everyone? No wonder the insurance executives are salivating just at the prospect of this bill being passed - they'll really be raking it in with the requirement of everyone, under penalty of fines, purchasing some kind of health insurance. Even with all the "restrictions" that the government would place on them (and they could probably get those softened with some heavy-handed lobbying at just the right moment) ... they still stand to make an obscene amount of money.

The second point that he makes, which I've mentioned before, is that as consumers, we should save insurance for major catastrophic things and long-term chronic diseases, and pay out of pocket for regular check-ups and the like. He advocates Health Savings Accounts. The guy is a businessman, and has lots of analysis in the article about how hospitals and other things are financed. It's ... astounding what's going on out there. And we're just going merrily along with feeding the insurance companies with our premiums which keep climbing and climbing, and what on earth do we know about how things work.

He does acknowledge that the major changes he suggests would have to take place over a couple of decades to make a full switch to an entirely different system. I think that's another problem with Congress and the shouting of the reform advocates - they want everything NOW. Well, dropping a multi-trillion dollar weight on the country in one shot is going to crush any semblance of an economy that we have left. And then no one will have health care because no one will be able to afford anything.

I agree that a major overhaul of our medical services sector is in order given the major changes we've experienced in technology and demographics in the past 50 years. We can't keep going with a system set up in 1950. But the legislation in Congress and potentially ramrodded through by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi ... that isn't it.