More than 50 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are due to catastrophic medical expenses.
The phenomenon of the increasing use of the Emergency Room for primary care is due to the ever increasing numbers of middle class families using the ER for that purpose, according to Maggie Mahar's book, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (HarperCollins, 2009), not the increasing numbers of illegal immigrants.
The increase in healthcare costs has virtually nothing to do with malpractice judgements and insurance fees. A Congressional Budget Office report, Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice (January 8, 2004). ??Evidence from the states indicates that premiums for malpractice insurance are lower when tort liability is restricted than they would be otherwise, but even large savings in premiums can have only a small direct impact on health care spending ??private or governmental ??because malpractice costs account for less than 2 percent of that spending (Emphasis added by me). ? The report continues, "Advocates or opponents cited other possible effects of limiting tort liability, such as reducing the extent to which physicians practice 'defensive medicine' by conducting excessive procedures; preventing widespread problems of access to health care; or conversely, increasing medical injuries. However, evidence for those other effects is weak or inconclusive." The report further states, "The available evidence suggests that premiums have risen both because insurance companies have faced increased costs to pay claims (from growth in malpractice awards) and because of reduced income from their investments and short-term factors in the insurance market." In other words it is not only malpractice awards, but poor investments by insurance companies (remember this was right around the time of Enron, WorldCom, and the whole dot-com bubble bursting), that is driving up malpractice insurance costs for physicians.
I personally believe that adopting a single-payer, national health insurance system, such as the one proposed in H.R. 676 The Enhanced Medicare For All Act, by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, would save taxpayers, employers, doctors, hospitals and the nation as a whole over 2 trillion dollars over the next ten years by improving healthcare availability and treatment for the poor, minorities, the working and middle class; by reducing sick days, and eliminating separate workmen's compensation payments by employers. The insurance companies can provide gold plated supplemental insurance for private rooms, voluntary plastic surgery, covering you in foreign countries, etc., so they don't have to go completely out of business.
There are probably lots of other economic reasons for establishing a system of national health insurance, and while they are important to some, I think that they pale in comparison to the moral considerations.
Let us begin at the beginning: children.
I believe we can all agree that the younger the child, the less personal responsibility they bear for their growth and well-being. A newborn cannot live without care by other older humans, and yet he/she totally lacks any ability or knowledge to obtain that care for themselves. As the child grows older, he/she grows more capable of survival, but is still dependent on responsible adult guardians for food, shelter, transportation, education, and healthcare while he/she is learning the educational skills that will permit them to be productive members of our society.
So what happens to this theoretical child if the responsible adult guardian isn't responsible?
What if the responsible adult guardian is dead, incapacitated, mentally ill, or addicted to alcohol or drugs? What if the responsible adult guardian does the very best they know how, but their own background has prevented them from receiving the educational skills that would have permitted them to be productive members of society. You can't tell a person who is functionally illiterate to go to the library and read a book or get on the computer. Nor can you tell a person who is working 100+ hours a week to feed and clothe their child, to take a class and learn how to read.
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