Why health care insurance reform is needed
To the editor:
When the Clinton's were debating health care in the early 1990s, 95 cents on every insurance premium dollar went to pay claims. Now it is slightly above 80% which means that about 20% of what everyone pays for health insurance goes to profit and administrative costs including executive pay. I don't mind a company making a decent profit but don't see why executives should receive astronomical compensation. In 2008 Ronald Williams (CEO of Aetna) received $24,300.112, Edward Hanaway (of Cigna) received $12,246,740 and Coventry'a Dale Wolf received $9, o47, 469. Pay of these three alone is enough to pay premiums for about 50,000 families who can't afford insurance and wind up getting care tax payers pay for at Emergency rooms. Think any Republican senators and congressmen will point that fact out at protest rallies that Fox News will promote? Think any Democratic senators and congressmen will point out that their proposed health care bill only specifies that 80% of what people pay in premiums gets paid out instead of something approaching 95% as was the case on the early 1990s? No. So, what will we hear?
Republicans will claim that malpractice is the culprit and Democrats who receive hugh campaign contributions from insurance companies won't argue. Doctors say their worries about lawsuits drive them to order costly tests and procedures that their patients do not actually need. Malpractice reform will help save money, but not as much as some people believe. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that while tort reforms could lower malpractice-insurance premiums for physicians by as much as 25 to 30 percent, the overall savings to our health care system would be a minuscule one-half percent.
Republicans will claim that the proposed health care bill will ration care and Democrats will argue that it doesn't but neither side will point out that some sort of rationing will be required to cut health care costs! Of our total $2.3 trillion health care bill last year, a whopping $500 billion to $700 billion was spent on treatments, tests, and hospitalizations that did nothing to improve our health. Even worse, new evidence suggests that too much health care may actually be killing us. According to estimates by Elliott Fisher, M.D., a noted Dartmouth researcher, unnecessary care leads to the deaths of as many as 30,000 Medicare recipients annually.
Republicans will claim that the proposed legislation is socialized medicine and Democrats will rightfully claim that it isn't. Neither side, however, will point out that single payer systems such as Canada's, that provides better care at lower cost, with half the administrative cost, is the only way to actually lower health care costs significantly.
I'll close with a tidbit I heard on public radio a couple of days ago. According to an independent analysis, if there is not real health care reform, by the year 20 something health care will cost the average American family, that will be earning $50,000 a year, $31,000. Perhaps then the public will fill the streets, where they will be anyway because they can't afford homes, to demand real health care reform.
The way I see it Democratic politicians, for the most part, are determined to provide as little real health care reform as possible, Republican politicians are lock step determined to stop even that and the general public us not yet willing to demand real reform.
Charles Leach,
Lynchburg, Ohio