Medicare: Not who pays, but how much we pay
To the editor:
First, let’s start with the cold, hard facts. In the U.S. we pay 286 percent more for our health care than the average of the 30 leading industrialized nations. Yet, the U.S. is ranked only 24th in quality. Congressional Research Service (CRS) and World Health Organization (WHO) studies show the average cost for other industrialized nations is $2,800 per person per year while the United States pays over $8,000. That means we pay an extra trillion dollars per year! Those who insist we have the best health care in the world are picking out a few areas where we excel, while ignoring overall quality. For example, the U.S. has lower life expectancies, higher infant mortalities and more deaths resulting from medical mistakes than most of these other countries.
Current Congressional attempts at solutions ignore the single biggest factor in making Medicare solvent: the cost. They argue about who is going to pay more — seniors, taxpayers or future generations. They focus on vouchers, higher taxes or more debt, instead of concentrating on reducing the cost. The Medicare entitlement is paid for through payroll deductions by workers and premiums from seniors. Medicare purchases health services from the same health care providers that the rest of our nation uses. If our cost and quality were in line with our global competition, we would have more than enough to pay for Medicare.
The high cost of health care in the U.S. has multiple causes: fraud, 50 million uninsured citizens who force the rest of us to pay their bills, overuse of defensive medicine resulting in unnecessary procedures and tests, prescription of higher cost instead of brand name drugs, lack of ability to negotiate costs for drugs, unrestrained hospital costs, and medical bankruptcies. For decades our Congress has unsuccessfully used a Band-aid approach. However, the nations we compete with have successfully addressed these issues, which resulted in lower costs and improved quality in their countries. We are the last of the industrialized nations to realize that the cost and quality of health care must be competitive.
We must look at health care in the U.S. in a different way if we want a different outcome. Our health care system performs more like an unregulated monopoly. An unregulated monopoly takes advantage of customers by raising rates independent of the cost of living or inflation while disregarding quality. An unregulated monopoly also gets to pick customers that provide the most profits and deny customers that will diminish their profits. Based on these criteria, our health care system IS a monopoly.
The Health Care Reform law contains many of the needed provisions to control costs and improve quality. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) puts doctors and health care professionals in charge of improving the quality of health care, not bureaucrats or insurance companies. The IPAB will reduce unnecessary procedures through evidence-based medicine and provide a vehicle for sharing best practices to improve quality.
Fixing our health care pits seniors and you, the taxpayers, against the largest lobbies and special interest groups in Washington. Billions of special interest dollars are being spent to make sure the problem is not fixed!
If Congress continues to cater to lobbyists, middle class workers and seniors will pay more for second-rate health care while the health care monopoly rakes in higher profits.
DON’T LET THEM DO IT! Pay attention to the TRUTH and VOTE!
References to CRS studies:
assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40517_20090831.pdf
assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34175_20070917.pdf
Jim Roach
Candidate for U.S. House
of Representatives
Cape Coral