Kidshowbusiness Solves the Health Care Crisis!

That's right, I'm back, with the solution to all our health care problems. It's incredibly fun and easy, and a lot less expensive then you might imagine. I can't even take credit for the idea, since practically every other industrialized democracy in the world already uses it. It's called a single payer health care system and I honestly can't believe there's even a debate about this, since let me reiterate that EVERY OTHER FIRST WORLD COUNTRY ON THE PLANET ALREADY HAS THIS SYSTEM!!!!

Here's how it works: The government takes a tiny little cut of your paycheck each pay period, you know the way they already do to pay for Medicare and Medicaid (and the same way your employer already does if you have employer based health insurance). The government uses this money to put together (or take over) a national health care system. You receive an ID card in the mail and from that point on whenever you go to the doctor, or the hospital, or to get a prescription filled or whatever you just show them the card and whoever it is bills the government. That's it. That's the whole plan.

By the way, what I'm talking about here isn't extra money on top of what the government and your company is already taking out of your check. I'm saying that instead of Medicare and Medicaid and your insurance company, what we would have is one big National Health Care complex and that is where all the money, that you're already paying, would go. In fact, there's every reason to believe that the amount you'd be paying out of each check would actually go down, rather than up.

There are many reasons for this, but let's start with your insurance company. What does it actually do? Aren't they essentially just a middle-man? A middle-man that gets to tell you which doctor you can go to and what medical procedures you can and can't have? A middle-man that can kick you to the curb if you get too sick, become a financial liability? This doesn't actually sound like a good deal to me. And if you're ALREADY sick, you can't even get in on this terrible, terrible deal. Remember the insurance companies make money collecting checks from healthy people, not paying bills for sickies. If you don't have insurance, and you get sick, you are essentially shut out of our health care system. Let's go over that again. If you're sick, you can't buy a health insurance policy. Aren't sick people the only ones that really need health care? What kind of system is this?

Getting back to the cost issue, a person I know that lobbies for the health care industry (we'll call him the health care company stooge) claims that the insurance industry only takes about 1% of health care spending every year. Doesn't sound like much does it? In fact it sounds like bullshit doesn't it? Well, it might be, but let's use that number anyway. Remember the previous paragraph? What does the insurance industry DO for their 1%? What do they contribute, medically? How do they help patients get well? They actually don't do anything. So, if we get rid of them and turn all their functions over to the government, we've already saved 1% of all health care spending right there. Oh, I'm sorry, we've saved AT LEAST 1%. We did agree that that 1% number sounded like bullshit didn't we?

But won't the new national health service have to duplicate everything the insurance companies do anyway? Won't that cost money? Not exactly. Remember the government is already doing all that with Medicare and Medicaid. Essentially we'd just be expanding that and cutting out the insurance companies. No billing department, since it's all coming straight out of everyone's checks anyway. Consolidating all these different companies saves money in other ways too. Think about all the paper work you have to fill out when you go to the doctor/hospital. Now imagine that multiplied by the number of insurance companies there are out there. That's right, every company has their own form of the same paperwork. Now replace that with one set of paperwork, from the government, that everyone already knows how to process since it will probably be just the Medicare/Medicaid paperwork with a new name at the top.

Then there's the drug companies. Suddenly they're going to find themselves with only one customer. This is what we call "negotiating from a position of strength". Expect prescription costs to go down. The same thing goes for medical technology companies. The only people interested in buying what they have to sell will be the government. Those savings will be passed on to you! Oh, and malpractice insurance. I expect that when all doctors work for the government this won't be nearly as big an issue.

Probably the biggest form of savings will be in the form of preventative care. Currently, if you are without insurance, essentially your only health care option is the emergency room. This is between 10-20% of the country we're talking about here. About 30-60 million people. Somewhere in that range. They don't go to the doctor on a regular basis. No check-ups. No mammograms. No running to the doctor if they have the sniffles. So, nothing gets caught at the check-up stage. They don't find tumors until they've become malignant. They don't run to the emergency room until a cold has become the flu, or the flu has become pneumonia. In other words, up to 20% of the country can't head small health problems off at the pass, which is much less expensive. All their health problems become big health problems. And if they can't afford health insurance, guess what else they probably can't afford? The answer is medical bills.

Do the doctors and hospitals just eat the cost of treating these very large health problems? Um, no. They bump up everyone else's bills to compensate. And then your insurance company raises your rates. The government has to take more out of your check. Or borrow the money probably, but the point is the same. Do you get it? These people that don't have insurance... you're ALREADY paying their medical bills. It's in your interest to make their bills as small as you can. Like say, $100 for an antibiotic instead of $5,000 for a week long hospital stay.

While it would be nice to improve our health care system and save money at the same time, there is always the possibility that opponents raise, namely that the government is so incompetent that a government-run healthcare system would take MORE money from everyone rather than less. To this I say, "meh". Let's suppose the government takes over, and everyone's share of health care expenditures goes up 20%. Well, guess what? Health care costs are rising about 10% a year anyway under our current, broken, system. So, your bill was going to get there anyway without reform, either next year or the year after. And now the government is in a much better position to control costs. Think about it: is the same government that runs around in a circle and screams in terror at the idea of raising anyone's taxes really going to let your health care premiums go up once they're running the joint?

Besides, even though no one likes to talk, think, or hear about it, this is really much more a moral issue than a financial one. 60 million people with no health insurance in this country. How many of them are children? I don't know. Don't think about it. They're not your kids anyway. But, to be clear, we're not talking about illegal aliens or welfare cheats. Most of these 60 million we're talking about (the ones that aren't kids anyway) have jobs. Maybe their employer doesn't offer health insurance. Maybe they're self-employed. Maybe they simply can't afford to pay premiums that go up 10% every year and still buy food, clothing, shelter, etc. For whatever reason, if they get sick, they just have to wait and hope they get better. If their kids get sick, they have to go to the emergency room and then wait for a bill they can't ever pay. While you're waiting for that bill, here's an interesting little tidbit: a 2001 study in 5 states concluded that medical debt contributes to about 47% of bankruptcies. And that was in 2001, before W. finished destroying the economy.

Now, a pointed story with an obvious moral. Once upon a time in this country, there was no such thing as a fire department. If your house caught fire, you and your neighbors did the best you could to put it out before the whole neighborhood burned down. Then some bright fellow came up with the idea of a "fire company". No, this wasn't a company that sold people fire, it was a company that would send qualified fire extinguishment professionals to your house and put it out, if it happened to be on fire already. In exchange for which you payed a small monthly "protection" fee. This model caught on and by the late 19th century most major cities had several competing fire companies. If you were foolish enough to not sign up with one of these companies and your house caught fire, they were all more than happy to rush over and watch your house burn down. Haha, just kidding, in reality they were delighted to put out the fire, as soon as you signed up with their company, which you really, really wanted to do now, didn't you? In a hilarious aside, if more than one company showed up to get you to sign on the dotted line, there were many occasions when, rather than put out the fire, the different companies got into a fistfight about who was going to put out the fire instead. Eventually, it was decided that the "for profit" model didn't really fit with the calling of fire-fighting, and government took over this function.

Now for some boring statistics. This next chunk comes straight from Wikipedia's article on Health care in the United States, so if you don't like it, take it up with them. The good people at Wikipedia write:

"Many have argued that the system does not deliver equivalent value for the money spent. The US pays twice as much yet lags behind other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy. Currently the U.S. has a higher infant mortality rate than most of the world's industrialized nations.[nb 1][11] The USA's life expectancy lags 42nd in the world, after most rich nations, lagging last of the G5 (Japan, France, Germany, UK, USA) and just after Chile (35th) and Cuba (37th).[12][13][14] The USA's life expectancy is ranked 50th in the world after the European Union (40th).[15][16]

The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study).[17][18] A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries.[19]

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of insurance).[20][21] The same Institute of Medicine report notes that "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." [20] while a 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found a much higher figure of more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance.[22][23] More broadly, the total number of people in the United States, whether insured or uninsured, who die because of lack of medical care was estimated in a 1997 analysis to be nearly 100,000 per year.[24]"

Did you get all that? Basically, we spend more and get less for our money then the other 1st world countries out there. Oh, and in some aspects we get less then countries like Chile and Cuba. Countries that aren't exactly rolling in the dough. Get it? There's something wrong with the way we do things. That's the point. We need a new system.

I'm going to wrap this up by getting back to my original brilliant idea. We need a single payer health care system. We need a system that doesn't spend most of its time making money for private companies and bankrupting individuals. Will a single payer system be perfect? Don't people in countries with this system complain about slower care, or inferior quality of care? In fact, don't people in Canada come down here to get medical treatment?

Okay, I doubt the system will be perfect. It's possible that you might have to wait a little longer for non-urgent care. I very much doubt that quality of care will be an issue. After all, people in Canada come down here to get medical treatment. But probably not as many as we have going to Canada for the same thing. The people in Canada coming down here are basically jumping the line, or paying extra for a procedure their government health plan doesn't cover for some reason (possibly they don't think it works? Whatever). The people we have going to Canada go because it's their only option.

This is supposed to be the greatest country on Earth. All our politicians, regardless of political party say that. So, considering that, and considering that we're already spending more than anyone else, don't you think we might be able to put together a system that manages to serve everyone, while still avoiding the pitfalls other countries have experienced? I mean, we're better than everyone else, and we're already spending more money, so if we switch to the same system they have, should't our version be much, much better? Is this, or is this not, America?