U.S. HEALTH CARE REFORM BILLED

Former President Bill Clinton urged Democratic Senators to pass health care reform this year stating, “the worst thing to do is nothing”. Economist Paul Krugman recently reiterated this tone of urgency, when he stated, “we should be more concerned about the consequences of health care reform not passing than passing” (Weiss, Forbes, 12/14/09). It seems the health care debate in Washington has been dwindled down to a mere rush against the clock, a dialogue seeking any reform rather than the best reform. I suppose the American people are left to answer the lingering questions without much help from Congress….

What will happen to the finances of private Health Insurers and Providers, as more people gravitate towards a public, government-run option for health coverage? According to the health care reform bill in the Senate right now (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), the public option (created to “compete” with the private options) will be financed by taxpayers and run in a similar manner to Medicare. But in reality, “Medicare reimburses doctors and hospitals at rates 70% to 80% below those of private insurers” (WSJ, A20, 12/11/09). Naturally, hospitals and doctors are forced to eat their losses by treating people covered with a public option or they turn and raise prices for those with private insurance. Either way, it was dauntingly noted in the same article that about half of U.S. hospitals are running a deficit or are close to it. It seems apparent that adding more patients under a government bill will follow former patterns in causing greater increases in the costs burdened upon the private payer or the hospitals. It sounds like this type of reform might therefore put us back in square one. If so, “doing nothing” doesn’t sound like the worst option if it happens to save us from spending $900 billion on a program that only drives costs up for health care consumers.

Another lingering question might be related to the sudden demand this bill would pose on family or general practitioners. The Washington Post published an interesting story about a family practitioner who serves in a rural area in Texas (“The Only Doctor in Town” 12/5/09). This single doctor is responsible for proving medical services for families stretching across a 25-mile radius. This same article mentioned the recent pattern of shortage in general practitioners graduating from Medical School, because the financial incentives for studying a specialty are more than worth it for students accruing the thousands of dollars of debt that Medical School imposes. If the status-quo is already leaving us with a deficit in family doctors, I can only imagine that deficit widening as people are more likely to make general visits if they know those visits will be covered by checks from the government.

These questions inevitably lead back to the moral rhetoric behind the push for health care reform. I mean, how can I even ask these questions and still have a heart? Although, it seems more popular to view health care as a human right, we must remember how we first attained such a position to even make such high demands for what we are inherently entitled to by virtue of our humanity. Health care started as an industry. Our doctors are the best and most specialized in the world because we have a system that provides incentives for all the work it takes to get to the places of greatness in which our medical professionals currently find themselves. Essentially, our health care system has been an industry; providing incentives for continued innovation, research, and risk-taking. Unfortunately, industrious development always leaves room for inequality. But ought we to demonize the process by which health care took in its development while simultaneously exclaiming that everybody has a natural right to take advantage of its benefits?

-E.C.Soria