How sick is Health Care
Digging through some old papers a few years ago, my mother-in-law came across the hospital bill for when her second son was born in 1958. They had no insurance. Few did in those days, and the bill totaled $75. That included a week's stay in the hospital.
In 1993 we were expecting our second child, and also had no insurance. We managed to save up some money and contacted the hospital regarding paying the bill ourselves. They said prepaying meant we could spend only $2,000, only if there were no complications and it included only 3 days in the hospital. But this was the hospital, and the doctors, both the OBGYN and the Pediatrician. The whole shebang.
Last year I had my gall bladder removed. Because my liver was also affected I had to stay in the hospital a week. The hospital billed our insurance company over $25,000 dollars, of which the insurance company paid $10,000. The hospital then billed us a bit over $1,100 and wrote the rest off. Then followed an army of specialists, anesthesiologists, and other varied and assorted -ists—each also billing both the insurance company and us. I was actually expecting to get a bill from the janitor, but that never came (Maybe they need to change their title to "Janitorists").
What in the world happened between 1958 and 2007?!?
In 1958 few people had insurance, so hospital bills were scrutinized carefully by the people paying them. Today patients are so far removed form the eventual billing process that they rarely see the actual bill. And while insurance makes us feel better about those occasional needs for medical care, we ultimately pay for all of it and more. It may be skimmed off your paycheck before you ever see it, but it's still your money—you earned it.
I used to work as an optician, so have seen the "game" played from a health provider's perspective. I also, obviously, understand it from a patient's perspective. But it's still a game, a silly one at that. The provider charges more than they expect to get. The insurance company pays less than what's billed, but doesn't look too carefully at the bill, and the insured eventually pays for everything—$10 aspirins and all.
But the question that still bothers me: If a health care provider intentionally overcharges knowing the insurance company will underpay—how is that not insurance fraud? Is it because the patient, who ultimately pays the bill, is the only one that doesn't understand the "rules"? If the insurance company is not monitoring the bills all that carefully, how do they know they only over-charged, 20%, 40%, or 60%? And why has this system been allowed to continue so long? Could it be the $265 million plus in political donations made by the insurance industry over the past 9 years? Maybe the almost $350 million in political contributions made by health care providers over the past 9 years has also had a "tiny" affect. Both industries profit heavily from the current confusion which leaves the average Joe paying out the nose for outrageously-priced, health care.
Oh, the Democrats have a solution, identical to Karl Marx's solution to the imagined evils of Capitalism—cement the problem into the bureaucracy so everyone suffers equally. In other words—socialized medicine. Except there's always a group that somehow manages to escape the suffering everyone else is expected to endure: Those who make and enforce the rules. Isn't that convenient.
Another disastrous idea Democrats have pushed is tax deduction for employee health insurance. The problem with that is it endorses an additional layer into the already confusing mix. If you thought having three players in the game was confusing, adding a fourth would make it almost incomprehensible. The problem isn't that employers aren't offering health coverage, but that health care itself is too expensive as both the provider and the insurance industry milk the public of money that all too often never needed to be spent in the first place. Individual health tax credits would keep a fourth player (the employer), possibly even a third (the insurance company) out and encourage the individual to do more to minimize their own medical expenses.
The status quo isn't working, and socialized medicine simply puts a government label on the status quo, which solves nothing. Pushing more people under the umbrella of corporate health plans masks the problem and allows it to grow and fester.
Ultimately, the bottom line, is the bottom line. Would you knowingly pay $10 for an aspirin? Then why tolerate a system that allows someone to do it for you, while pretending to be helping you and hiding their dishonesty? Why elect leaders who won't address the problem?
Posted by Danny Carlton at May 7, 2008 8:24 AM