Healthcare Reform

This is a small diversion from my usual posts, but I had to write this paper, I might as well share it with you. It is a quick run down on how I feel about Healthcare reform. I should have included more research and I could write five more papers about different issues under the main umbrella, but another time, another space. For now, here it is:



President Obama has called for the nation to begin reforming our current healthcare systems. In a nation built on free enterprise and fueled by American dollars, earned mostly in service- based industries, healthcare companies have been allowed free reign. Tax breaks are given to companies who insure their employs, huge, privately owned healthcare companies funnel their money into research aimed to cut costs and increase profit margins- money that is largely seen as charitable contributions to fund research grants.

The primary responsibility of insurance and insurance companies is to cover unexpected events and costs- we pay into escrow, the provider makes a profit directly from the premium and the rest is made in the form of interest from moderate investments. Americans payout for services we have yet to receive, and may never need, in order to protect us should we need procedures and medication we could not otherwise afford. Instead of following basic and sustainable business plans, insurance companies who provide baseline healthcare for premium prices have developed impossible scenarios to avoid paying fairly for the medicine and procedures their clients need. Catchphrases like “pre-existing condition” have been coined specifically to save companies money and leave citizens who consistently pay their share for healthcare to foot exorbitant medical bills- bills their insurer had guaranteed to cover when they signed up as healthy, often times young workers.

Healthcare companies attempted to gamble in an unstable market by placing their investments in risky endeavors- investments made in a market built on sub-prime mortgages and the ever-increasing debt-to-income ratio of an entire nation. The healthcare industry as a whole lost sight of the basic goals of providing viable and complete insurance to those who pay a fair price, and compromised the health of a nation of trusting policy holders for the sake of free enterprise and undeserved, inflated earnings.
In order to make up for their irresponsibility, companies have resorted to the most basic and primal survival instincts- stealing from the very customers they vowed to protect in sickness and in “un” health. Premiums have become as expensive as the care itself, doubling in the last decade (Singer.)

Peter Singer reintroduces the idea that healthcare should be rationed; suggesting that price already dictates who benefits from a ration system. According to Singer, rationing is based on the fact that healthcare is a limited resource and regulated by economic shifts and trends. Singer says this is not enough, that we must have a government implemented proactive agency that will volley for the rights of a nation of patients. Singer argues that we spend a third of what we earn as a nation on healthcare, while other industrialized nations spend far less for better care. It is difficult to see the justification in this view when our nation has the highest life expectancy, and arguable the highest overall quality of life. How can Singer justify the belief that nations with government run healthcare give their citizens better or even equal care without someone having to pay for it?

The question insurance providers, patients and politicians alike should be asking is not “How can we help the healthcare industry?” or “How can the government ration healthcare?” It is much bigger than digging the industry out of its own hole or changing the way people attain access to healthcare. The question is how do we review the system and require responsible business practices from those who promise a service and are more than adequately compensated? How do we regulate an entire industry that was for so long focused on making money, instead of serving their customers?

What is our answer from Washington? How does the government plan to make health insurance companies provide the healthcare they promise at rates that nearly every citizen can afford? We have been promised the public healthcare buy-in in order to answer the needs of the millions of uninsured Americans. Politicians are asking Americans to disregard the poor state the healthcare industry is in and to be willing to pay the same amount they are already paying for healthcare that would be regulated by the government. How can the answer possibly include adding a middleman, namely a government that owes more than 11 trillion dollars to other countries and it’s very own citizens?

Politicians who support the healthcare reforms being passed in Senate have publicized the benefits our society would garner from the changes they deem necessary. “Healthcare for all, run by Washington” is what we are being promised. Who really wants to trust their health to a bureaucratic government that is difficult if not impossible to navigate now? The government already offers subsidized healthcare in the form of Medicare and Medicaid, organizations that are notorious for their unwillingness to pay for adequate care for their patients.

Take a closer look at another well-known government run healthcare office- the Veteran’s Administrations hospitals across the country- hospitals that are notorious for their out-of-date equipment and procedures and their underpaid and under qualified staff. Ask any Veteran and they will tell you war stories from the local VA rather than the front line. In recent years, Walter Reed Army Medical Center has gained an infamous reputation for one of the worst medical facilities of its kind, stories about endless bureaucratic regimens in order to obtain basic healthcare, amputees waiting months or years for outpatient therapy, patients counseling each other when access to qualified medical personnel is denied or limited, and those recovering from illness and injury in dilapidated buildings with few necessities, let alone any comforts. (Priest & Hull, 2007) Brave men who have served this country are unable to attain healthcare adequate healthcare at a rate they can afford when the medical decisions are left up to Washington, what, then, is in store for a whole nation of patients?

The answer to the healthcare question does not lie in handing the reigns over to the government. The answer is not represented by using government funds to bail out the insurance companies so they can once again pillage the defenseless public. The answer is not in reform, it comes in the form or review.

The goals for Washington should be to review the healthcare system, find the flaws, and protect Americans. If the industry can remember what their primary goal is, to provide for the insured at the highest level of care available for their premium, and be less concerned with how much money their companies can make by mismanaging funds earned when customers pay into their policies and seeking tax breaks and loop holes in policies, then a balance can be restored, putting the patients needs before the needs of the insurance company.

Government agencies should be created in order to investigate insurance company’s investment practices. Insurance companies should only be allowed to make solid and protected investments for moderate returns. The liquid assets of an insurance company should always be at the value or higher than the value of the premium care available to their insured at any given time. Regulating the insurance companies in order to protect the customer’s benefits and assure Americans that insurance companies are operating at the best of their ability to provide those benefits is the job of our government. Politicians in Washington who earned political science degrees assuming the responsibility of rationing healthcare, forcing the consumer to buy insurance from a government- run agency that knows nothing or next to nothing about providing healthcare, is not an adequate solution.