Preface:
Affordable health care is an "issue," and one that I am deeply concerned about. It is presented here as just one of hundreds of "issues" that are negatively affected by our moneyed political system. This page represents why corruption in the political system cannot be ignored.
Drs. Linda and Eugene Farley, retired physicians working to move forward a universal health care system in Wisconsin, say that “Our state and country have excellent health care resources, but we can never make the most effective use of them until we change the archaic, inefficient, wasteful way we pay for them. The needed change is difficult when the health care community gives $1.4 million per year in campaign contributions to keep things just as they are; profitable and limited. Ours is the most expensive system in the world but it ranks only 37th by the World Health Organization. This is a pure political issue that is being governed by the moneyed political system. The money is against the needed change but voters can fix that - Fix that and we can fix health care.”
Health Care
After retiring from 35 years in the health care industry, I've seen it up close and naked and it is not a pretty sight. Make no mistake about it: health care is a profit-making industry and it is no longer a humanitarian service. And it is perpetuated by the politicians who receive campaign contributions from health care and insurance industry leaders.
There are really two issues:
It is costly as hell because Congress has changed many of the rules at the behest of major contributors of campaign cash. Over $100 million per year from health care interests -- which include hospitals, medical associations, HMOs, insurance and the pharmaceutical giants -- go into the pockets of US congressmen and another $1.4 million per year is reaped by Wisconsin's state legislators.
Why else would they allow hospitals to convert from non-profit to profit status? Or for hospitals to buy up physician practices and control and enhance their referral base? Or for physicians to build their own hospitals and drive up unnecessary testing to make them profitable? Or to allow physicians to purchase expensive diagnostic systems for their offices and use them as cash cows? And the most recent biggie, creating a whole new privatized industry called Medicare Part D (for drug plan) that will shell out over $780 billion to the drug industry over the next decade?
It's called Follow the Money and the public is rightfully mad as hell. But until the flow of campaign cash is stopped, don't even think about fixing health care (or any other societal issue for that matter).
And with all of the profit in our "market-driven, for-profit system," why else would Canadian physicians not flock to America? They certainly can't become multimillionaires under their own system, with a $400K salary cap. (However, there are now more Canadian doctors heading north than south.)
The Canadian system is not perfect, and it will surely go downhill as the for-profit interests in that country lobby their parliament to under-fund it even further. This will cause longer wait times and a patient desperation that will more readily accept privatization. But even as Canada is today, 90% of its citizens prefer their system over ours. Their life-expectancy is two years longer than ours, infant mortality is 35% less than ours, administrative costs are 9% compared to our 31%, and their overall costs are 50% less than ours even though they cover 100% of their population compared to our 85%. Our health care is 16% of GDP and growing, and theirs is just 10%.
What's not to like about that?
With an infant mortality rate like Canada's, 15,000 babies would be saved per year in the US. Instead, 18,000 Americans die prematurely because they are of the 47 million who have no insurance.
The World Health Organization has listed the US system as 37th in the world, clearly a result of those making the profits being willing to share them with the politicians who made it all possible. They should all hide their heads in shame.
This so-called free-market, for-profit health care system is a hoax. Those in the industry know that and so do the politicians. Now you know it too.
People who are or have a loved one that is sick will follow the advice of the physician, the guy or gal that spent 8 years studying medicine. There is no such thing as "competition" in health care. It is pure folly perpetuated by an industry to win over the business community that believes in a free-for-all market system. But as the business community is led to slaughter the system will continue driving jobs out of the country and people into the poor house. Over half of personal bankruptcies involve or are caused by exorbitant health care debt.
What we need is a Medicare-for-all system. It's not perfect but is an excellent model for our own universal health care system. Since going on Medicare I see the same (private) doctors as always, go to the same private hospital as always, but have a different insurance payer: a private administrator under contract to the federal government. It's WPS in Madison.
This system would replace Medicaid and other state medical services for the poor, and it would reduce worker compensation costs by 40%, as well as auto insurance, since all injuries would be handled by Medicare. Much of the savings would be in the elimination of the excess profits going to the nation's 1500 insurance companies, plus major reductions in emergency room services for the uninsured.
And employers should not pay for health care, the public should! In taxes.
Actually, we already pay for medical services when companies add their medical costs to the price of their product and we pay at the cash register. So let's remove this burden from businesses and encourage more to keep their jobs in the US. They surely can't compete with product coming from countries with universal health care systems. What else can we expect than to lose 60,000 Ford and General Motors jobs in the US? Ontario now makes more Big Three autos than does Detroit, all because their health care costs are $6500 per employee in Michigan compared to $800 in Canada.
Why have our business leaders not demanded a national, single-payer health care system like that in Canada? Why has the American public not demanded full public funding of state and federal campaigns? This would cost $15 per taxpayer per year (to cover both state and federal elections) but would eliminate the over $4000 per year we taxpayers are charged to offset the government giveaways to the special interests who do fund the elections! And if we got the private money out of the political system we wouldn't even be discussing health care because the politicians would have fixed it on their own.
Our business leaders must sideline our for-profit health care promoters and fix the American system once and for all. Our free-for-all health care system is killing our free-market business profitability and forcing jobs abroad. Our $2 billion per day trade deficit translates to money not spent here on education and security but is instead spent elsewhere on strengthening other potentially unfriendly regimes. Poor political decisions help degrade that process, and only the politicians are to blame.
In the meantime
I don’t expect insurance or for-profit hospital interests to support this, but physicians must surely have seen the handwriting on the wall by now. They are increasingly becoming “corporatized” and they face a better future in the hands of an independent health care board as proposed under
Healthy Wisconsin.Only under a clean elections system will politicians start voting for policies that are in the best interest of the public. We've got to get smart.
Jack Lohman
jelohman@gmail.com