I can think of no other one thing that would so insure the dissolution of Medicare and insure the increase in cost for Health care.
Answer essay to Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by Charles R Morris
Charles Morris starts off his essay Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by acknowledging the consensus within the US that “American health care is careening toward fiscal catastrophe. He goes on to compare the health care industry to the farming industry and the growth rate of Intel. Mr. Morris ignores, or has overlooked a very important part of the cost health care: the health insurance industry.
Mr Morris is quite right in his claim that procedure by procedure the prices are falling. He mentions gall bladder surgery as an example. This procedure used to be an extremely invasive procedure that left a large scar and required at least an overnight hospital stay. This surgery is now an outpatient surgery, with the patient spending the night in their own bed and often up and around the very next day. With the costs of these procedures dropping and the more accurate methods of diagnosis people are saved the pain and discomfort of not knowing as well as the pain of invasive surgery.
The greater problem is not the individual cost of each procedure, or the greater number of procedures being performed, or even the incredible increase of the diseases of obesity, but the problem from a cost stand point is what stands between the average person and their health care. The insurance companies weigh and decide what is necessary and what is unnecessary, whom to insure and whom not to.
The health insurance industry is one of the fastest growing industries today. According to Ross Eisenbrey in his report to the Economic Policy Institute in the ten years from August of 1997 to August of 2007 employment in the health insurance industry grew by 52% (1.) The medical industry that supports this only grew by 26% and even worse the job growth rate in the economy as a whole stood at only 12%. (Eisenbrey) The other thing that has been growing along with the insurance companies is an entire industry of billing professionals. As the labrynthian maze of plans, companies, and exclusions widens so does the cost for the doctor to bill his patient. This is passed on to the patient in the form of increases in the basic cost of health care.
Meanwhile the rates to be insured keep rising and employers are having to pay a greater portion of their profits every year with many passing on some of these increases to their employees resulting in lower take home pay. Mr Morris ignores this economic downside in his essay.
While the prices of individual procedures may be going down, the contracts the insurance companies negotiate with doctors lower the prices of individual procedures for the insurance company to pay forcing the doctors to raise the price of those procedures to the general public. With the growing unemployment and the increasing number of people who are going uninsured today, to talk about how someone might choose to forgo a toy in order to live longer is approaching glib.
Reed Abelson in his article for the New York Times titled Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows (Abelson, 1) claims that insurance premiums have grown even more steeply in the past year, close to 9%. In this same article he reports that the Kaiser Foundation found that the cost to insure a family of four hit 15073 dollars this year. With costs like this the traditional role of employers as insurance providers is becoming untenable. Ironically the very legislation that made insurance available to so many people in the latter half of the twentieth century helped to build up the industry that now truly controls how much the true cost of medicine today.
Meanwhile this same reporter published an article on May 13th of 2011 that the insurance companies were heading into a third year of record profits. Mr. Morris cannot claim that health care costs are not rising too fast in the US without looking at an intrinsic component of our health care industry. One of the main components of Mr Morris’ argument is that the increase in the GDP of the Health Care Industry is entirely in keeping with historical trends. This however is not true when you include our Health Care Insurers. With runaway profits and grossly inflated CEO salaries the cost of health care is rising too fast in the US. It is just hiding behind the curtain operating the switches and demanding to know who it is that is questioning the Great Oz.Eisenbrey, Ross. Health Insurance Employment Outpacing Providers and All Industry Growth Rates. Economic Snapshot. September 18th, 2007. EPI.org. Web October 12th, 2011.
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