Is Barack Obama Any Different Than Other Politicians? Part 5

 

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

From a distance everything Barack Obama says sounds great. The events of the last eight years have created cynicism and despair. We are a nation thirsty for hope to solve our many problems.

In healthcare the basic problem is not how we are going to pay for healthcare for all of our citizens but how to change the healthcare delivery system to create a healthier society and less chronic disease. Eighty percent of our healthcare dollars are spent on the treatment of chronic disease.

Barack Obama’s National Health Insurance Exchange does not address the basic problem in a meaningful way. It creates another bureaucracy that will drive competition out of the market place. It will result in socialized medicine with all of its bureaucratic and monetary problems.

 

“National Health Insurance Exchange:

The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible.

I believe his National Health Insurance Exchange will drive the private insurance companies out of the healthcare insurance business. This might not be a half bad idea since the healthcare insurance industry controls healthcare cost and earns a grotesque amount of money. Also the government outsources and will continue to outsource its Medicare administrative services to the healthcare insurance industry at an equally large profit.

“ Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.”

The only option remaining would be the new public plan similar to Medicare Part C the coverage that Senator Kennedy has. In recent years Medicare Part B has experienced increasing deficits. The increasing deficits have resulted in increasing costs to seniors and decreasing healthcare benefits. Increasing costs and deficits are inevitable in a single party payer system if the basic problems in the healthcare system are not addressed.

I believe the goal of the Democratic Party is to convert our healthcare system to a system of universal care with a single party payer. Hillary Clinton tried it in 1993 and Barack Obama will try in 2009 if elected.

It has been said that democratic countries in the west with single party payers do just fine. Canada and England have healthcare systems with universal care with a single party payer. All one has to do is look online at newspapers in Canada (National Post) and London ( Evening Star) to see how well these systems are really doing for their citizen. The following articles appeared in the National Post in Canada

1. Millions of Canadians lack family doctor

MD uses lottery to cull patients Not first such case as lack of doctors causes huge caseloads. In the latest jarring illustration of the country’s doctor shortage, a family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine which patients would be ejected from his overloaded practice.

 

2. Let private sector into health care: CMA president Day

“We must not deny any patient access to essential health care based on ability to pay; nor should we deny access based on a shortage of doctors, hospital beds or operating time.

“Competition, consumer choice and market principles barely exist in our health system. The CMA President is asking for the basic principles that stimulate organizations to work properly

“Let’s note that three of the main Olympic values — excellence, universality, sustainability — are similar to our values and aspirations for a truly great health system. “And, of course, an integral part of the Olympics is competition. Without competition we cannot expect improvement, let alone excellence. “I believe that if we are to preserve universal health care for the next generation, we need to embrace similar principles.”

He clearly pointed out the problems with the Canadian system.

“And he bemoaned the fact that more than one million Canadians were on waiting lists for health care and that five million people did not have access to a family doctor. Yet neither the governing Conservatives nor the Liberal opposition seemed to care, he charged.”

This is what I worry about with Barack Obama’s healthcare plan.

“Individually, most [politicians] have a deep understanding of the plight of our health-care system.”Collectively, especially at the federal level, they are reluctant — even afraid — of engaging in a meaningful public policy discussion on health.

Claude Castonguay, a former health minister in Quebec summarized the findings of a report he submitted to the provincial government. He said that public health care system, as it now stood, was not financially sustainable.

 

The following articles appeared in the London Evening Star

 

1. Doctors call for ‘rationing’ of NHS services

“Rationing of services in the NHS is a ‘fact of life’, doctors insisted. The British Medical Association said a postcode lottery operates nationwide with some treatments denied to patients simply because of where they live.

It called for a charter that would tell patients exactly what ‘core’ services they are entitled to receive in England.

But in order to make the NHS work successfully, the BMA says the day-to-day running of the service must be wrested from politicians.

James Johnson, chairman of the BMA’s council, said there had to be an end to the ‘constant political dabbling’ and ‘micro-management’. “

2. London’s healthcare is lagging

3. Third of broken hip victims have to wait two days for surgery

“Thousands of elderly people with broken bones caused by falls are being betrayed by a postcode lottery in NHS care. A report says around one in three broken hip victims had to wait more than 48 hours for surgery – a delay that could have put their lives in danger. “

Enough said about the glories of socialized medicine in Canada or England. Is this what the American people want? Some say most people are satisfied with the healthcare service they receive in Canada and England. Only 20% of the population is sick at any one time. Therefore (most) have no idea what is going on in the healthcare system. It is easy to say they are satisfied with the system when they are not sick.

Rather than our next President creating another ineffective bureaucracy and costly entitlement program all he would have to do is

1. level the tax playing field for the self employed to be able buy insurance with pre tax dollars
2. permit the purchase of insurance across state lines
3. produce purchasing power and negotiating power for consumers with hospitals and physicians and insurance companies in a real price transparent environment
4. impose community rating with universal coverage regardless of pre-existing illness

5. provide ownership of the first $6000 to the consumer

I would bet consumers would use their healthcare dollar wisely.

Barack Obama’s National Health Insurance Exchange is a bad idea. It will not work if passed. The fact is the plan is not hopeful. It is the opposite of Barack Obama’s message of hope. A message America dearly needs.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.