Healthcare: It’s Too Important for Government Work by Rory Adams

Universal Healthcare sounds great. The 47 million Americans who don’t have insurance get covered and the costs don’t pile up on anyone. It will be cheaper because of the “group rate” concept and the bills will go directly to Uncle Sam. Medicare and Medicaid are programs that have successfully thrived since their creations. Virtually all of Europe has it. Canada has it. The American Privatized Healthcare system is broken and Universal Healthcare is an all-encompassing fix, right?

No, every ounce of this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Business and Media Institute claims that the number “47 million uninsured” is not even close to being accurate. It claims that included in that number are people that can afford insurance but aren’t getting it, people that qualify for Government Healthcare but haven’t signed up, and people that aren’t even American Citizens.

First, 10 million aren’t even American Citizens. They just live in the US.

Second, the Census reports that over 8 million of those people are making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.

Third, another 8.7 million of those make more than $75,000 a year. The median income of the US is about $46,000, says the same Census report, so these are all people that make above average incomes.

Right there, that’s 27 million people that can be subtracted from the original 47 million. Now there are 20 million left.

Universal Healthcare is another idea that, to the average voter, seems like an easy solution to another one of the problems from which the American people suffer- at least 6.5% of them. The notion seems almost benevolent to anyone who hasn’t actually thought it over. 

The problem is that Universal Healthcare gives everyone coverage, “they just don’t get it when they want it,” says general surgeon, Dr. George Crawford. 

It doesn’t alleviate the costs because the bills don’t go to Uncle Sam; they go to the average, everyday citizen in the form of taxes.

Anyone who has ever taken Economics 101 (and passed) knows it won’t be cheaper because of the simple laws of supply and demand, that is, unless quality is sacrificed. Medicare and Medicaid are two of the biggest flops of legislation that have ever existed. Almost every European Country and Canada still have private health insurance because their standardized systems fall short of giving adequate healthcare for anyone who wants to get real medical attention.

There has never been an entity in all of history with a greater ability to rack up debt than the US Government. Putting the practice of medicine in its hands is the worst idea that anyone could come up with. The fact of the matter is that most governments, and particularly the US Government, have an incredible knack for screwing up anything they touch.

Private systems that provide the best products, charge the lowest prices, and are eliminated if they don’t perform well against their competitors, are the only way for the evolution of the healthcare system.

Canadian doctor, David Gratzer, is one of the most outspoken critics of his country’s Universal Healthcare system. He has written critiques and collected interviews from people living in countries with nationalized healthcare all over the world. In City Journal Magazine, an article titled The Ugly Truth about Canadian Healthcare, he explained a few of them:

Suzanne Aucoin had come down with stage IV colon cancer, and her doctor suggested Erbitux, a revolutionary cancer treatment, but the Canadian National Healthcare system refused to pay for it because they said that it was unproven. The FDA in the US had already approved the drug, so she went to the US for treatment. Suzanne was denied reimbursement again and again. Eventually, the Canadian Government decided to pay out. Interestingly, Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance in the US.

“She represents a dramatic new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and often suing) to get them to pick up the tab.”

Dr. Gratzer also explains that one day in 1997, he walked into the ER and there were people waiting for treatment, and some had been doing so for five days.

“Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.”

He interviewed a British woman who needed to see a cancer specialist and set an appointment, but her appointment was cancelled “48 times”.

Dr. Gratzer said that there was such a shortage of doctors that, “Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.”

He even says that M. D. Anderson, a cancer center in Texas, actually spends more money on Research and Development than the entire nation of Canada.

Dr. Gratzer makes the point that although Americans are looking to Canada to find a program that would best help their citizens, more and more Canadians are looking towards the US to seek out the Healthcare they need.

He claims that over one million Britons are waiting for some type of treatment. Lucky for them, they will not get a bill in the mail, but to say that their treatment comes without a price is completely untrue. These examples show the cost, and it isn’t cheap.

Although many people don’t like to think about the medical profession as a business because there are human lives on the line, doctors still deserve their fair share at earning a living. They don’t go through years and years of post-graduate education so they can starve. They diligently work to provide a high quality service at a fair cost, and make a profit like any other business.

Economics of business are based on the simple laws of supply and demand. As demand goes up, so do costs. As supply goes up, costs go down. Price is a result of these two concepts combined with the overwhelmingly beneficial role of competition.

Doctors are in business for two reasons: to supply a good product at a fair price and to make money. It is an often cited and abundantly clear failure of Universal Healthcare that the lines get longer. As a business runs, the implications of this are immeasurable.

The length of a line in the waiting room is a direct indicator of demand. There will be more people in the line than doctors are capable of seeing. In other words, the supply will be limited.

In order to maximize profits, prices will rise until the number of people in the waiting room is equal to the total number of people that a doctor can see in a given day. If prices go too high, there will be nobody willing to pay the prices and the line will disappear. This is where competition comes into play, because people will be going to see another, less expensive, doctor.

But, Universal Healthcare advocates have a simple solution to this: fix the prices (thus eliminating competitive products), and assign a specific doctor to every patient (thus eliminating the market).

If the prices are fixed, the best doctors will not be earning what they deserve, and the less experienced doctors will be rewarded. If that’s the case then the overall quality of healthcare is diminished. If prices are not fixed then doctors can charge whatever they want, and the costs will go through the roof.

This is always going to be the case with Universal Healthcare systems. Either the quality is diminished or the prices skyrocket. In most cases, Universal Healthcare is cheaper because quality of care is insufficient. 

If, as in most of Europe, each person has an assigned physician, then people are condemned to the luck of the draw when it comes to the ability of their doctor. Furthermore, since the Government is telling people what doctors that they have to go see, then the Government can be held liable in cases of malpractice or negligence. With a standardized system, the government (and subsequently the taxpayer) will be forking over the ever increasing fees.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the United States as 37^th overall in healthcare. What is never heard is that the US is ranked first in the level of responsiveness. That means that the best results, of anywhere on Earth, occur here in the US.

 It is important to know that if anyone in the entire country needed immediate healthcare, they would get it, regardless of whether or not they can afford it. Again, it is the most successful healthcare that money can buy.

There are 2 main reasons why the country is ranked so low. One of the criteria that factors into measuring the overall system is the average level of Health. The US finishes a staggering 70^th on the list. WHO says this has to do with poor health of Native Americans, rural African Americans, and the inner city poor, also adding higher than average HIV rates, high tobacco-related cancer rates, high levels of heart disease, and uncommonly high violence rates. Secondly, the US is the uncontested biggest spender in healthcare costs.

Last year, Forbes magazine published a list of the most overweight countries in the world. It turns out that 74.1% of the USA is overweight, which ranks as the fattest Western Country on Earth. It is easy to note that though people like Michael Moore are the biggest advocates of Universal Healthcare, people that are similarly obese are another reason that the US spends so much and has such low levels of Health in comparison with most of Europe.

Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States, and the list of diseases that result from it is extensive. It has well documented links to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, skin disease, different types of cancer, musculoskeletal disease, neurological disorders, chemical imbalances, respiratory disease, and a whole slew of mental, emotional, and psychological issues.

Dr. Crawford says obesity “is not a main factor right now, but I think it is slowly on the rise as the epidemic spreads throughout America. It is going to be a big factor... because more patients are getting sicker, and we have to accommodate them.” 

It is actually quite amazing that health in the US is as good as it is given the overwhelming inability of almost three quarters of the population to maintain a healthy weight. All in all, the US ranks as the 9^th fattest, yet still ranks 37^th on level of health.

What Universal Healthcare advocates want is a system where people can blame the government for their health, instead of accepting the responsibility of eating healthy and exercising occasionally.

The US is, by far, the biggest healthcare spender per capita in the world, but many people fail to remember that for the most part, people get what they pay for. The best products are almost always the most expensive.

The fact of the matter is that there is no better way to do it other than a free market, private system. With a national system, there is no competition, and no incentive for doctors to go the extra mile to achieve exceptional results. The only thing they can do is try to cut costs wherever they can, and hope that their businesses, their livelihoods, and their patient’s health aren’t destroyed by an ever increasing deficit.

The main problem with cost comes from insurance companies. They spend an abundance of money on clerical work, advertising and marketing. It is a mistake to say that rising healthcare costs are not, at least in part, due to the overcharging middle men and also the frivolous lawsuits that people are filing against doctors. 

Dr. Crawford claims, “We are the healthcare system that is probably sued the most. You have to go into it with the attitude that I am going to get sued, because the odds are that a lot of suits are not under your control.” He guesses that “70 percent” of the lawsuits are frivolous.

A study from the University of Michigan claims that OB GYNs in the state of Florida have the highest malpractice premiums of anywhere in the entire nation. In 2004, the average premium was $195,000 per doctor. In Miami alone, the average yearly premium for malpractice insurance was $277,000. 

An OB GYN in Miami, therefore, has to pay $760 dollars A DAY just for insurance. The effects of this on the charges they must incur are obviously enormous.

Dr. George Crawford explains, “Florida is a real bad state for a physician to practice in. It costs $200,000 a year to run a practice, and that is not a busy one, and you have to turn around and pay $270,000 in malpractice insurance, you are already looking at almost $500,000 you haven’t even made a dime yet. And then you turn around and someone says, hey, by the way, we are going to cut Medicare payments by 10% this year, because the economy is bad, and insurance companies say if they’re cutting it by 10%, we are going to cut it by 20%.”

“What some people don’t get is that, medicine is expensive to get, but it is expensive to practice too.”

This is a prime example of why lawsuits against doctors need to be curbed, and the losers of these lawsuits should be required to personally pay the legal fees of the winner. That way, people won’t be as sue-happy as we have seen in recent years. People might think first, and doctors might not have to settle out of court every time someone has pain in their little finger.

“If it’s not about money, does there really need to be a judgment? You need to tell a physician, hey you screwed up, to get $300,000. $300,000 is not going to bring his grandmother back. You are just getting a financial reward” questions Dr. Crawford.

In 2004, Florida Legislators passed a bill that says that any doctor who has had three judgments against him loses his/her license to practice medicine in the State. That only encourages doctors to settle out of court, and thus encourages lawyers to sue. The cost of operating a doctor’s office then increases, and that will be reflected in medical costs.

“In Florida, it’s not if you get sued, it’s when you get sued,” says Dr. Crawford. “It’s a reason for me not to practice medicine in Florida. Florida is driving itself out of the healthcare business.”

We’d be better off to follow Shakespeare’s advice from Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It would almost certainly lead to a dramatic reduction in healthcare costs.

There are plenty of ways that America could alter the current system to ensure that prices go down and everyone can get healthcare, without sacrificing the highest level of responsiveness and the most aggressive system of research and development in the world. 

Insurance companies need to be held in check so that top CEOs are not making billions off of the misfortune of others. The denial of coverage should be illegal, to help the few who are actually trapped by the system. They need to start cutting costs in the area of advertising and clerical work, and start paying out the claims that they frequently deny.

It is also very frequent that insurance companies are granted huge discounts for services that an uninsured person does not receive. There should be a market price for every customer, and not enormous discounts for the insured.

Frivolous Lawsuits must be eliminated. People are suing because they can make a quick buck, and doctors are settling out of court regardless of culpability. Physicians need to be respected and defended, and any person who files a suit against one should have to pick up the legal fees if they lose. Dr. Crawford thinks if we could do that, “I think that a lot of the costs in medicine would go away.”

He also says we need a “Universal Healthcare Information System, all computerized through one system, so physicians could see a person’s history in a matter of seconds as opposed to trying to get it from patients, and having human error and mistakes.” It would undoubtedly make medicine more efficient.

Anyone who can afford Health Insurance and is too lazy or cheap to get it should not be bailed out when their irresponsibility leads to problems. Medicare and Medicaid need not be replaced, but people who are eligible for them need to be responsible enough to register for them.

The implementation of these few changes would lead to magnificent results. More people would get the healthcare they need, at affordable prices, and the US could maintain its tremendous record of being a world leader in new medical technologies and procedures.

But overall, there is one certainty in this mess: Getting the government involved in Healthcare will ruin a system that is only slightly flawed.