Jason Murray

October 14th, 2011

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.

Abelson, Reed.  (1) Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows.  New York Times.  September 27, 2011.  Web October 12th, 2011.

Abelson, Reed. (2) Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care.  New York Times.  May 13, 2011.  Web.  October 12th, 2011.

An Opinion.

The following is an opinion.  It is an opinion gathered from experience, and research, and listening.  Just listening to people can provide great insight and allow you to state your opinions in a manner which shows that there is basis and value to that opinion. 

A good friend of mine recently had a small rant online about the not based in science claims about food, wheat, sugars, etc.  I chimed in because in the time I've been cooking, researching food, and learning how to cook a healthy, yet tasty and complete menu, I've found that there is a lot of misinformation about food, the effects of food, and the American diet. 

Let's start with wheat.  I've known people with real problems with gluten.  I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease, a condition in which gluten makes the small hairs inside your intestine basically lie down and turn you into a funnel for the food you eat.  This is a serious and potentially fatal condition that is made easier to bear thanks to people thinking that a gluten free diet is going to make them healthy.  The gluten free craze has resulted in bakeries, restaurants and even breweries developing flavorful gluten free products.  Celiac Disease is a fairly rare condition, however, and the people in the world that are truly sensitive to gluten is a very small minority.   This doesn't stop people from eliminating gluten from their diet in a desperate attempt to make themselves feel better. 

The problem with the theory that gluten is at the root of all their problems is simple.  Wheat is at the base of the food chains for practically every society in the world.  Countries like Italy and France do not have the health problems, the obesity, or the diabetes that we do as a society.  Within our society the groups that have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and health problems do not eat a lot of wheat as a rule.  The problem is not gluten, or sugar, or fatty foods, the problem is excess.  Many people who eliminate gluten from their diet probably do feel better for a short time, not because they have eliminated gluten but because they have taken one form of excess from their diet.  Americans have wheat at every meal.  Toast with breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, dinner rolls at dinner, and cookies, pastries, or cake for dessert.   This is 4 to 6 servings of wheat a day.  Usually in most diets this is also not the only starch they have, hash browns at breakfast, french fries or chips at lunch, and potatoes or rice with dinner.  This excess is what is the problem.

If people simply looked at their diet and balanced it better, ate smaller portions, avoided getting seconds and thirds, chose to ate roasted potatoes instead of fries, left the gluten out of one meal, or left the soda pop in the cooler, they would feel better without denying themselves something they enjoy.

We avoid high fructose corn syrup but buy things sweetened with GMO sugar beet sugar instead.  We demonize sugar but continue to eat it in its many forms believing that by eschewing processed sugar we are somehow more righteous.  If we as Americans started by avoiding the excess our society has suckled, if we just look at our ingredients, if we try not to eat too much of one thing, we will live healthier, longer, more productive lives.  If we, however, continue to live in excess, and by excess I include excessively eliminating basic foods from our diet, we will continue to suffer from the many problems associated with our excessive behavior.

In short, my opinion is that it is not gluten, sugar, or even high fructose corn syrup that is at the base of our health problems but the excess of our lives.  Excessive eating, dieting, restricting, buying, and living our lives in excess.  The old motto to "live simply, that others may simply live" needs to be the refrain we hear more often.

May 28th, 2014

2 Guns, 2 Men

the bullets
fly by like bees
stopping the screams

You can't take
my rights my guns
2nd amendment

he turns
just like death
staring coldly

the government
wants to take
my guns!

his finger tenses
he pulls against
the spring

I need to
protect myself
against the foreigners

the bullets
fly out like a swarm
stopping the screams

As he stands
proudly holding
a gun designed

the screams
are quiet and
the blood is so red

a gun designed
only to kill
other human beings

Two men
one screams about his rights
one doesn't scream at all
he just uses the gun
for it's only purpose
to kill