OpEd:
Healthcare Revisions: Why It’s Important
June 18, 2009 by Kyle BradyTags: America, Congress, Government, Healthcare, Hospitals, Insurance, Politics
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The topic du jour in American politics / media is a revision of the healthcare system, and depending on who is spinning the data, it’s easy to believe that the eradication of a private healthcare system is near, free government-funded healthcare is coming, and the poor, poor insurance companies are going to be forced out of business. Not only is this not true, but a revision of the healthcare system, provided it reaches a certain level of competence, is important and necessary.
Anyone who’s been to a hospital, a general practitioner doctor, or dealt with insurance policy billing knows that the system is broken – not just the insurance companies, but the system as a whole. Insurance companies undercut payments to doctors, so the doctors overcharge (and overbook) their services, which results in the uninsured being unable to make regular visits; patients wait three hours at a hospital Emergency Room, only to be told their insurance won’t cover what they need, or to see a specialist instead; insurance itself prevents many from getting the care (especially surgeries) they need, claiming treatments, medicines, and certain doctor specializations are unnecessary and not essential to the patient’s overall health. Not to mention many patients are removed from their insurance policies for actually using them when they get sick – cancer patients are a common example.
One of the central problems is the idea of a corporation itself – an organization that is more interested in its profits and shareholders than those providing it with profits is incapable of being the foundation of a healthcare system. Insurance companies are for-profit corporations, and hospitals, if not the same, are still pressed by investors for a level of financial stability. Doctors are understandably interested in their income, as many are independent and therefore necessarily profit-minded. But why are the insurance companies and hospitals for-profit? Why are they not, instead, non-profits or not-for-profit? “Breaking even” makes more financial sense in this situation.
President Obama is touting a details-still-unclear plan to provide a “public option” for insurance, which could be a smart move. In the current system, students, poor/underprivileged individuals, and many lower-middle class families can’t afford the insurance coverage they need, and instead settle for what’s financially possible – often, nothing. However, if there were a cheaper (subsidized?) public option, these people could have coverage – not enough to get braces or have elective surgeries, but enough to be healthy. Providing free healthcare for all people within our borders, including the homeless, illegal immigrants, and other similar categories of people, is an entirely different, and infeasible, option.
By creating a public option, capitalism is not being ignored or disrupted, because the insurance companies are not being forced out of business or otherwise unfairly disrupted – something many knee-jerk Republicans are failing to recognize. Advocating an additional option in a pre-existing system is not the same as replacing the said system, and, more explicitly, socialism is not rising from the ashes of our American capitalism.
While Obama moves legislation towards this public option insurance, consideration needs to be given to reforming the system as well – not just providing more options, but regulating the industry as a means of it becoming more stable, patient-dependent, and rational. If insurance companies and hospitals were forced to become non-profit or not-for-profit organizations, squabbling over “elective” procedures and “unnecessary” medicines would immediately lessen, as a simple byproduct of not being singularly interested in profit margins.
America needs healthcare reform, and soon. If the industry companies are closely examined, their ethics and operations are strikingly similar to those of the banks that recently failed – do the American people want to, once again, spend billions of dollars to support companies they never wanted to fund in the first place? Tax dollars can be better spent on reforming the system prior to its collapse, rather than irrationally fighting reforms and being forced into action a few years later.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.
