The Problem
The Problem - After you read this introduction, please visit the sub-pages including: The Foundation, The Matrix and Ones and Zeros
For years, Congress, the public and most employers ignored a steady increase in the cost of medical care, health insurance and other related costs. Congress, while managing over 50% of the health care in America through entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and various Children's Health Insurance Programs (CHIP), consistently refused to address the growing cost and its unquestioned certainty to bankrupt those programs. Individuals have largely been blind to these costs because of relatively low deductibles and copayments. These financing mechanisms have suggested to the consumer that costs have been stable. Employers, always protecting the best employees and trying to attract the most productive work force have absorbed these increases instead of educating employees and demanding that they take responsibility for their own health. The overwhelming truth is that healthcare insurance is high because health care costs are high. The only thing health care and health insurance should have in common is that health insurance pays for health care.
Congress, the public, and most employers all fail to recognize that there is not a shortage of health care or health care services. The real problem is overuse of the system by the wrong people and the failure of average Americans to take care of themselves. For example, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), from 1986 to 2006 obesity rose 35% for our total population. The CDC also reports that 65% of the adult American population is obese. Click here to see a dramatic power point slide based on the CDC data that ilustrates this growth. The CDC concludes that America spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation in the world. That investment does not however offer this country the highest quality or best outcomes.
The result of a promised government run healthcare system, with total access, will generate an even greater shortage of primary care doctors. The failure of the federal government to first address this shortage of primary care physicians before plunging into national healthcare will be a monumental mistake.
The passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 followed by the introduction of managed care in the 1970s pushed down what providers could charge resulting in an inevitable cost shift. In 2008 money paid to hospitals averaged 18% less than what they needed to break even. Medical societies have set the price of services for decades placing the fox squarely inside the hen house.
Previous efforts to fix the system have included refunds, bailouts, and stimulus packages all of which are temporary and ineffective. The beginning of the problem was the poor estimation of Medicare and Medicaid costs in the mid 1960s.
It is easy to forecast a looming economic melt down from the passage of government run healthcare, beginning with the failure of several large insurance companies. That could be followed by several additional unintended consequences. New technology would no longer be available to many private medical practices and eventually to most hospitals. This would be compounded by the loss of research dollars for new procedures and drugs. The next and most frightening consequence would be the increased flight of doctors, some moving out of the country, and others changing their focus to fields that are not influenced by government interference. Doing away with private insurance would also produce significant voids in state income. Two examples include Tennessee and North Carolina. Tennessee received $459 million in premium taxes in 2008 according to their finance department. While this money is not earmarked for any specific expenditure, it is the second largest income generator in the states budget. In North Carolina these same dollars fund every rural fire department in the state. America does not understand the total impact of the decisions being made in Washington.
Effective changes are needed and available, but neither the US Congress nor the administration is proposing that any of these solutions be placed as the center-piece of reform. Instead, financing has again taken center stage, largely ignoring the most volatile piece, delivery.
This Website is designed to do three things, identify the real problem with healthcare costs, provide a community for discussion and the sharing of facts from every vocation touching this issue and promote practical solutions untouched by politics and special interests.
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