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Private Health Care Costs Too Much and
Covers Too Few
Printed in the Mystic River Press, 6 June '02
The MRP's editorial bemoaning Big Government could be generalized to bemoan the ills of Big Bureaucracy,
wherever it exists. It is glaringly evident in the health care system in our country, and is a public nuisance.
Approximately 30% of our health care budget goes to sustaining its Big Bureaucracy. Americans spend two
times more on health care than any other nation, and our costs are the fastest rising. And yet we are the only
nation in the industrialized world which does not provide health care for all its citizens.
The best way to manage health care bureaucracy is to provide health care coverage for everybody in the state,
under a single administrative system.
You will be told by critics that universal health care will cost many billions of dollars. Bear in mind that that cost
is about two billion dollars less (by the state's own estimate) than the cost of our current health care system - a
system under which 12% of our residents have no coverage, 25% of working people say they can't switch jobs
because they dare not forfeit their health insurance, many seniors spend 30% of their income on prescription
drugs, and (with or without health insurance) a major illness would bankrupt one in four of us. A system under
which, despite having the best-trained doctors and state-of-the-art medical equipment, our nation ranks 21st in
life expectancy and 23rd in infant mortality rates, worldwide.
The self-employed and small business owners are especially hard-hit by health care costs. The cost of insuring employees or oneself is extremely high; only large companies can afford to do so in most cases, because they can purchase group plans. Even then, individuals with coverage who become critically ill may have their insurance rates raised, or may lose coverage entirely!
The CT Health Care Security Act (HCSA), which has been killed in Hartford too many times now, would allow everyone access to preventive medicine, greatly reducing the burden on emergency rooms (often the only kind of care available to the uninsured). At a time when ER personnel are predicting that "many people would die" in a widespread medical crisis, this is not an insignificant concern.
Apart from relieving the burden on emergency rooms, the fact is that preventive care and early treatment reduce overall health care costs. And when people have health insurance, they tend to seek out preventive care and early treatment.
The HCSA would allow everyone in the state to freely choose their health care providers, unlike "damaged care" HMO's. It would return health care decisions to physicians and patients, rather than bureaucrats and profiteers. It would eliminate much of the administrative overhead costs, the waste of unused infrastructure, and the exorbitant cost of advertising from the health care balance sheet. It would allow the state to obtain prescription drugs in bulk, at prices well below what an individual would have to pay.
A majority of physicians, and a majority of citizens, support this kind of legislation. Why hasn't it been enacted? One could conjecture that it's because of campaign donations and lobbying efforts made by special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries - the biggest obstacle to fair competition in a state run, for the time being, by the one party going by the names of Democrat and Republican. Voting records and campaign contribution sources are all available to the public, and should be monitored constantly.
We need to make many changes in this state, to reduce inefficiency and bureaucratic overhead. We should be making the easy ones, like universal health care coverage, now.
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