Health Care and the Age of Reason . . .

One cannot turn on the TV lately, without hearing about how Democrats have watered down the health care bill to get it through the Senate, and how Republicans have attempted to block everything the Democrats try to pass. Liberals are upset by the lack of a Public Option, Conservatives point to the elimination of the “pre-existing condition” exclusion, and cry that at least we’re making progress in helping people.

 

Let’s get the scenario straight. First, without a public option, tens of millions of currently uninsured healthy young people will be mandated to buy health insurance, bringing hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars into the insurance company coffers. Normally, this goes to “risk sharing,” and therefore would pay for the older, sicker people with those “pesky” pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, there is nothing yet in the bill to keep the insurance companies from charging people with pre-existing conditions more in premiums. That means they get to have their cake and eat it also. They will be collecting billions of dollars in new premiums, but will use little of it to pay for health care because there is no mandate that they apply the new premiums to the risk sharing pool.

 

Likewise, there will be tens of millions of new subscribers, but with the dearth of Primary Care physicians (for reasons that are too numerous to go into right now), these millions of people will wind up having to see Nurse Practitioners rather than physicians, because they are cheaper for the insurance companies. So, not only will the insurance companies be collecting surplus premiums that they will not use to provide health care, but when they do have to pay, it will be substantially less to the NP’s than to physicians. Never mind that the care may not be as good, or that the decrease in payments will not be passed back to subscribers, but paid into the pockets of their CEO’s as before.

 

This is a BAD BILL. It is cumbersome, expensive, and doesn’t solve any of the problems for which it was created. Let’s burn all 2000(+) pages of it, have a brief, but nice Yule fire, and create a bill that provides REAL health care reform. It isn’t hard to do, simply politically difficult to pass. Let your legislators know that if they don’t take this action, we’re going to have another voter revolution (vis-a-vis 2006). This time, however, it will be their (political) lives at stake, rather than our health and welfare. You see, when it comes to health care, we need to combat the insurance lobby. Write letters, call, email and fax your legislators but, ultimately, nothing will get their attention like the threat of losing their jobs and all that PAC money coming in. Let’s let them know who their REAL bosses are!