Healthcare “Efficiency”

Before nationalizing healthcare, we should consider the programs the feds already run, like Medicare. It’s a train wreck. Its reimbursement rates are so low they’re driving hospitals out of business, and it’s still projected to be bankrupt in a decade.

President Obama's solution is healthcare rationing. Government experts will decide how much care you're worth. They call that "efficiency."

As Sen. Paul Tsongas said, "If anyone thinks the words 'government' and 'efficiency' belong in the same sentence, we have counseling available."

Now they want to nationalize health insurance and control everyone’s healthcare, for "efficiency." The government will tell doctors what their patients need, instead of vice-versa. Grandma will be denied the best care, for the greater good.

That’s not efficiency, that’s rationing.

Politics, rather than health, will guide healthcare expenditures. You’ll wait five months to see a neurosurgeon or nine months for orthopedic surgery, like Canadians do. But all elective abortions will be covered, thanks to the clout of the well-moneyed abortion industry lobby, and Senate Democrats intend to exempt labor unions from the new taxes on health benefits.

Unlike Canadians today, we won't be able to cross the border for better care when our national health system fails us. We’ll be stuck, like the British, where the BBC recently reported on their alarming death rates from breast and prostate cancer: "The US had the highest five-year survival rates for breast cancer at 83.9% and prostate cancer at 91.9%... The UK had 69.7% survival for breast cancer... and 51.1% for prostate cancer."

Government healthcare and its attendant rationing are killing patients there. Do you think it can't happen here? Consider Oregon’s State Health Plan. They denied Barbara Wagner the expensive chemotherapy she needed for her cancer treatment. But they told her they would pay for her physician-assisted suicide.

Cutting costs by rationing care is deadly. But even deadlier, in the long term, is their intent to squeeze the profit margins out of private medical research. That will damage our pharmaceutical industry, and the resulting curtailment of medical research will cause people all around the world to suffer and die needlessly.

Fortunately, real efficiency improvement, which helps patients rather than hurts them, is possible. President Bush's Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) with High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) make medical care more efficient, affordable & available for 8 million Americans.

Unfortunately, the current House and Senate healthcare reform bills would both abolish HSAs & HDHPs.

I love my HSA! It cut my insurance premiums in half compared to Blue Cross, and gave me incentives to shop around, which fixed copays didn't.

So I found a cheaper doctor, who caters to people who pay for their own care. He’s less expensive because he’s more efficient. Most MDs have 4-5 staffers per provider. They spend their days dealing with insurance companies, government, and paperwork. But my doctor's office has just 1.5 staffers supporting 4 providers.

They manage it by cutting out the middle men: insurance companies and government. They’re "out of network" for everybody. You pay them and they give you a receipt, period.

The result is that my doctor's prices are comparable to the insurance co-pays elsewhere! An office visit is just $45, and a lipid panel is only $25.

To improve healthcare while spending less requires efficiency improvements like that.

Here’s another example. Last August I fell from a ladder, and injured my wrist. X-rays showed a non-displaced acute distal radius fracture (I broke the end of the big bone in my forearm).

I got a fancy brace, a prescription analgesic, and three office visits, each with x-rays and radiologist’s report. I paid for it all with my HSA debit card. Guess what it cost?

Most people guess $3000-$5000.

It was actually $270.

When I tell people that, they usually assume $270 was the sum of my insurance deductibles.

Wrong. Insurance paid nothing. $270 was the total cost.

With traditional insurance and a typical doctor, my out-of-pocket cost would have been about the same, plus the insurance company would had to have paid thousands. That money, in the final analysis, would’ve mostly paid for bureaucracy and paperwork, rather than medicine.

HSAs don’t work for everything. You need an HDHP for kidney transplants or brain surgery. But HSAs work very well to cut the cost of most medical care.

HSAs+HDHPs help patients by making medical care more efficient, affordable & available. Nationalized healthcare will do the opposite. It will endanger patients, by making medical care less efficient, less effective, and less available.

David A. Burton
Cary
For a copy of this article with hyperlinked references, see: http://www.burtonsys.com/health