Re: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - The USCHO debates
Here's one idea that our so-called health expert, who thinks he's above the partisan fray and some moral authority on the subject refuses to broach despite his wordy dissertations on how great ObamaCare will be.
Why not combine tort reform with the creation of a real competitive environment for health care?
Now, pardon the length of the following, but I've recently learned that, in order to be right about something, you have to write lots and lots of words.
No one is asking the fundamental question, or at least, no one is trying to understand the answer to the fundamental question.
Why is health insurance considered expensive? The knee jerk reaction around here? "Well, the insurance companies, they only want PROFIT. What a horrible, horrible motivation. They should be doing this for free, obviously, but it's that disgustingly un-American PROFIT that is keeping illegals and other uninsured folks from having their own coverage.
To answer our question, we must work backwards. Why is it expensive? Well, how do they come to the cost? It's expensive because medical care is expensive these days. Why is that? It's expensive for three main reasons - first, because doctors need to recoup the skyrocketing costs of medical school, which are rising much faster than the standard of living. Second, because doctors are required to carry millions and millions of dollars worth of malpractice coverage, premiums for which have been similarly skyrocketing over the last decade. And third, naturally, is that EVIL PROFIT that doctors are looking for.
The last one, we can't do anything about short of abolishing the 13th Amendment. Something could be done about the first one, but let's focus on the second one for now - why is medical malpractice insurance so expensive? Well, it's because insurance companies have been forced to dole out larger and larger settlements in court as ambulance chasing lawyers prowl about looking for the slightest excuse to sue for the largest pot of money they can convince a jury to hand out to a victim who may or may not be truly victimized. In addition, many states are requiring doctors to carry more and more protection just in order to practice. So not only do premiums continue to rise, the minimum coverage continues to rise as well, making it more and more expensive for doctors to keep themselves covered.
Premiums are so high now that many doctors are leaving the profession. Then we go back to what The Exiled One said - fewer doctors means more burden for the premiums. Prices go up as customers - doctors - become more scarce.
There's a corollary effect to this, as well.
Here's an excerpt from a brilliant piece in the Daily Mail by Stephen Glover, who critcizes both the American and British healthcare systems:
Once, in America and suffering from bad earache, I visited a local doctor. In [Britain] I would probably have been greeted with a weary smile, and, if lucky, offered an aspirin.
In the United States I was cosseted by a pretty nurse, and subjected to several exhaustive tests by an accommodating doctor, one of which involved me sitting in a sound-proof booth to have my hearing tested. At the end of it all I was presented with a bill for several hundred dollars - and the verdict that I had nothing to worry about.
"Several hundred dollars" - that is what the Obamatons will focus on in that passage. But what have we been doing kids? Work backward. "Several hundred dollars" follows "several exhaustive tests." Why did the hospital perform "several exhaustive tests" costing "several hundred dollars" for nothing more than a bad earache? It's because doctors are concerned about malpractice. Tests that usually would not be run become MANDATORY for doctors who must rule out EVERYTHING, even the least possible cause, lest they misdiagnose and... bingo! Malpractice lawsuit. More tests equal more costs. More costs equal - you guessed it, a higher bill. Higher bills equal higher premiums.
All of this - ALL of it - goes back to the "legal lotto." Eight and nine figure judgments in court are commonplace these days. I know what the knee-jerk reaction is going to be from the Obamatons - BUT YOU CAN'T KEEP THESE POOR PEOPLE FROM SUING! SOME OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE TRULY HAD THEIR LIVES RUINED BY MEDICAL MALPRACTICE! And to that I say, you are right. There are some people who truly need the legal system due to some completely inept doctors out there. But how many cases are there that
really require eight or nine figure judgments? Even a lot of smaller judgments are, to be quite honest, frivolous, the product of hucksters in pinstriped suits spinning a sob story for a jury he picked for gullibility.
Serious, honest tort reform would produce an effect in the opposite direction. Limits on this "legal lotto" would necessarily drive premium costs for MMI down through free-market competition for customers, and would keep doctors from having to conduct myriad tests and such when they probably aren't really warranted. More doctors would come back to practice, all in all driving costs down, and drive down the costs of healthcare premiums as well.
The second idea is simpler - encourage competition in the health insurance marketplace by loosening restrictions on what and where people can buy, across state lines. Obama has been spouting that a government program would introduce more competition into the market, but a government program would increase competion by precisely one option. Why not increase by MANY options?
I'm sure no one will read all of this, and that's cool. You know, I'm just such a partisan hack (leswp1) with no ideas (Rover).
