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 bankrupting hospitals, yet it's still projected to go bust in a decade.

President Obama's solution is 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.”

They'll nationalize health insurance and control your healthcare, for “efficiency.” 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 science, 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 liberals want to exempt labor unions from the new taxes on health benefits.

Canadians cross the border for better care when their national health system fails them. But 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. Think it can't happen here? Consider Oregon's State Health Plan. They denied Barbara Wagner the expensive chemotherapy she needed for 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 medical research. That will damage our pharmaceutical industry, curtail research, and cause people all around the world to suffer and die needlessly.

Fortunately, efficiency improvements which help patients rather than hurt them are possible. President Bush's Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) make medical care more efficient, affordable and available for 8 million Americans.

Unfortunately, the current House and Senate healthcare reform bills 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, who spend their days dealing with insurance companies, government, and paperwork. But my doctor's office has just 1.5 staffers supporting 4 providers.

They've cut out the middle men: insurance companies and government. They're “out of network” for everybody. You pay, and you get a receipt.

The result is prices which are comparable to the insurance co-pays elsewhere! An office visit costs $45, and a lipid panel is $25.

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

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, most 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 similar, 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 cover everything. We need HDHPs for kidney transplants or brain surgery. But HSAs work well to cut the cost of most medical care.

HSAs+HDHPs help patients by making care more efficient, affordable and available. Nationalized healthcare does the opposite. It endangers patients, by making care less efficient, less effective, and less available.

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