Health Care Reform (Part 2 of 3)Nothing will change unless we attack the core problems.
Who gets the Bad press for trying to keep insurance premiums down?Insurance companies that want to keep the costs down always end up getting bad press when they will pay only so much for certain procedures. Why? Because those payments are based on actuarial tables or on sound business principles. No one ever seems to jump on the hospitals and doctors. It is always the insurance companies fault. Why is that? Because most people don’t know what type of coverage they really have till they are in the hospital. (Note: It would be nice if insurance companies could get rid of all that small print, but that won’t happen till all these lawsuits gets under control.We are not identifying the real problems facing our health care.These so called politicians are just that, politicicians.They have no business sense or economics sense. They are on a feeding frenzy like a pack of sharks. They are all dealing under the mob mentality syndrome. (If you don’t know how that works. Please look it up on the internet) and they are now wanting to add another bucket of money to their coffers and drag us, the taxpayers into it. They are selling us hype. Why do we have a bill that is over 2000 pages in length? Because you have over 400 politicians writing a bill, and they have to all protect their own interests instead of the interests of all the American citizens. Otherwise it would probably be limited to 10 percent of those pages. As usual our government leaders are dealing in a reactive way rather than a proactive way. Think about it, they are attacking the problem from the wrong direction. They are treating the problems rather than fixing the problems. Just like someone having to clean water out of their basement every time it rains, rather than fixing the crack in basement wall. The problems need to be fixed first. And herein lays the problem, no one wants to be accountable and attack or control the real core problems. No one is even discussing how we remove or control all the issues that are creating the higher costs, Nothing will change if they don't attack the cores pproblems. If we could make these core problems more manageable and control them, then insurance companies could probably offer more lucrative coverage. This in turn would result in the spreading of the risk, (more people owning and paying) which would then result in more people affording it. The National health Bill is trying to somewhat do this, but these politicians are approaching it from the wrong direction. Their concept and approach only adds more fuel to the fire.
National health Care. The more serious problems Need fixing first.It is a known fact that certain doctors continue to have and refer patients for unneeded tests and procedures. Who is suppose to slap their hands and say stop that. And how many specialty clinics do we really need to have? These just continue to drive up doctor’s overhead and operating costs.Hospitals and doctors offices sometimes over bill or double bill patients. Who watch’s out for the patient? Who audits the bill? When Hospitals and Doctors send the patients bills directly to the insurance companies, the patient don’t care what’s on that bill as long as it is paid. Who takes ownership of these problems? Additionally, each and every doctor sends out their own bill and there is no uniformity. Because of this, unless the patient is a CPA, they can not figure those bills out. (Been there, done that. it’s a nightmare) Malpractice need to be brought under control. There needs to be a common sense approach to this issue. Should someone age 50 who is earning $40,000 a year be given a $12,000,000 (million dollars) settlement, when they may only have the ability to earn another $700,000 in their life time? Maybe settlements should be limited to $2,000,000 and have all associated medical costs taken care of during their life time. If insurance companies had a cap on malpractice they could start dealing with a known factor vs. an unknown factor and that would help reduce rates.
These and other unknown factors are a serious problem.When you start to add or include additional unknown factors into the health insurance premium equation (such as pre-existing conditions, fraud, unethical claims, malpractice lawsuits) then the health insurance companies must deal with these unknown factors.Common sense should prevail here, knowing that we can not continue to have these ongoing core problems persist and think this National Health Care bill is going to make them go away or will solve them. Remember economics 101. You need to accept the reality that there is only 100 cents in a dollar.
As an analogy…Lets say you fill your gas tank in Rapid City, knowing you can drive from Rapid City to Sioux Falls on Interstate 90, based on the exact mileage of 329 miles. But let’s say, along the way, you run into a detour and you have to go off the interstate and travel down to Nebraska to get to Sioux Falls, then this unknown factor you had to deal with is going to require you put more gas in your tank to get there. Then you run into a ditch and have to get towed out. So because you had to deal with all these unknown factors that you had no control over, it costs you more money, so the price to get there goes up. This is same problem Insurance Company’s face. Unknown factors. (“There is only 100 cents in the dollar.”)
Business sense and common sense needs to prevail.You can not be taxing the medical suppliers and raising taxes on insurance companies (as indicated in this Bill) and having another layer of government agencies involved and expect the insurance premiums to go down. Even the simplest mind has to realize that those costs will have to be passed through to the consumer. (Of course, our elected leaders never attended Economics 101) Their operating economic policies are called (Economics deep pockets 101), meaning they can just continue to tax the people to make something work. No scientific data needed here.Part 3 will talk about the new tax bucket they want. To review part 1 of this series, click on the Health Reform-1 Nav Bar on the left side of this page
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