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Well, here we are back again trying to figure out how to plan for national health care. Some people seem to be absolutely, 100 percent convinced of one of the plans now being bulldozed through Congress and their rivals across the aisle are 100 percent against any change. I guess I’m inbetween right now – and I think a lot of other people are too. Let me repeat one thought from last week’s blog:

Personally, I’m not dead-set against any national plan that guarantees health care for everyone, believing that some such provision is now being recognized as part of our nation’s moral imperative. But I also can see the other side of much current opposition – despite the overheated hype – that we should be absolutely sure of what we’re doing before we turn the whole system upside down. And I also worry about what could well be an out-of-control national deficit and the tax burden we may be piling on our children and grandchildren.

Fortunately, there is help from the Higher Regions – at least higher than the hell-bent pushers in Congress. A column by Charles Krauthammer, printed a few days ago in the Indianapolis Star, just seemed to inject an antidote of reason to counter all the acrimony. It was headed: “Kill the bills and do it right,” and started with:

“The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with
its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity
by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and
other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.”

He cites three fatal errors: mandates with financial penalties, insurance companies told exactly how to value risk factors, and sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies – all “picked out of a hat.” He adds: “The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.” He advises that we “do health care the right way – one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.”

How to do it? Krauthammer suggests three ways to start: First, what’s called “tort reform” – not exactly a household name, but what it means is “lawyers suing doctors.” He claims we are wasting about half a trillion dollars (real money) every decade, about half benefiting “extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers,” and the rest is wasted “in millions of unnecessary tests, procedures and referrals undertaken solely to fend off lawsuits.” Makes sense. But he notes that in the House bill there is no tort reform.

Secondly, simply abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines for more competition. Again, makes sense. Most of us didn’t even know there is such a prohibition.

Thirdly, tax employer-provided health insurance – another provision most of us didn’t know about. It dates back 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls that creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues – the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

Krauthammer agrees that we need to make changes to “insure the uninsured,” but current proposals have chosen the worst possible method – “a $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency.” The better choice, he advises, is “targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one” (as cited above). To do so, he claims, would take a bill of 20 pages, not 2,000, to provide funds to cover the uninsured “without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.”

Makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Dec.07.2009 :: Uncategorized ::

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