The Health Care We Deserve

Now the country is finally beginning to address health care reform in a meaningful way, in what could well be the most important domestic policy debate since the New Deal.

Key elements in this debate are competition, costs-and courage.

Competition. A huge point of contention is defining what additional role, if any, government should play in health care. As we see, this argument quickly descends from policy to ideology, which is why it is so difficult.

Many Americans favor a "single-payer" national health care system run by the Federal government-a huge shift from the current system managed by private insurance companies whose primary goal is to turn a profit. Statistics show that the single-payer systems used by most other industrialized countries are more equitable and efficient than the hodge-podge we now have here.

But single-payer is not on the table in 2009, shelved by strategists in the White House and in Congress who fear the power of the health insurance lobbies to scuttle any reforms that contain it.  Single-payer could put health insurance companies out of business and they will fight to keep that from happening.

There's a compromise afloat-the so-called "government option" in which a government-run health care plan would be just one option for consumers, competing with private plans to enroll members. The plan or plans that worked best for lowest costs would gain customers, forcing others to either improve or leave the market. Sounds like classic capitalism, right?

But even this thoroughly sensible idea is in under attack because the insurance companies are afraid that they would lose such a competition, forcing them to either better meet peoples' needs-or lose business. They are already arguing that the playing field would be tilted against them. Unlike the government, for example, health insurance companies find it difficult to pressure themselves to use their leverage to contain costs-because those costs add to their own profits. They also argue that they have expenses that the government doesn't-like the billions they spend on advertising and inflated CEO salaries.

The arguments against a government option would collapse of their own weight were it not for the support of lawmakers eating at the trough filled by the health insurance lobby. As President Obama put it last week to Republican lawmakers: "Why is it that the government, which private insurers say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical...they should be able to compete."

Cost-containment.  Three of the best new ideas:

- Focus more attention and dollars on prevention, which costs far less than treatment, especially treatment in ERs.

- Put more attention and dollars on expanding primary care, which is a low-cost way to keep people healthy and reduce the number of higher-cost interventions.

- Create a national electronic database of medical records, which would drastically cut administrative costs while reducing medical accidents.

But that's the "easy" stuff. There can be no serious effort to cut health care costs in this country until we as a people accept that we can't have it all. We can't have an MRI machine in every clinic and we can't provide unlimited options for treatment and at the same time complain that our health care costs are too high. 

Medicare paid for expensive exploratory surgery for my dying 94-year old mother that, even had it succeeded, would have given her only a few more months. Her case is hardly unique.  Studies show that, overall, adding expensive high-tech options does little or nothing to improve health care outcomes.

But do I want a government bureaucrat telling me whether or not I can have a certain medical procedure? No, I do not, but even more I don't want an accountant in an insurance company making that decision. I want a doctor helping me and my family choose options. And if those options are limited, at least I want them limited by some sensible parameters created by experts who have no economic stake in the outcome.

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