Friday, March 06, 2009
Universal Healthcare: Some basic common sense
I understand that a considerable percentage of the population is against Government mandated Universal Healthcare on the grounds that this will increase their tax burden. It seems like a reasonable assumption, and after all, Conservative politicians, pundits and journalists have been quick to put forth this notion. But it is extremely misguided, as I will demonstrate here using simple common sense, coupled with a few facts – something in short supply among detractors.
First, and most obviously, anyone who is insured currently pays higher premiums than they would if everyone was insured. This is because when an uninsured person gets sick enough, they are given treatment. And the costs are not swallowed by altruistic healthcare concerns. They are passed on in the form of higher costs to those who pay.
In the same vein, the cost of running public hospitals is passed on in the form of taxes. So it is untrue that we currently pay nothing for the uninsured.
From there, the picture becomes somewhat more difficult, as HMOs and other insurers will seek to maintain their profit margins. They will surely launch a propaganda war that will have considerably more to do with maintaining their stranglehold and their profit margins, than actually telling it like it is. So how is it?
My doctor told me that the numbers of young medical students opting for Internal Medicine (your family doctor), have dwindled alarmingly due to drastically reduced earnings potential caused by imposed Healthcare Insurers maximum payment schedules, and the nightmarish and very costly bureaucracy that each must navigate in order to get paid by the insurers. It is fair to deduce from this that the standard of general care has gone down in recent years as doctors face the stress of cramming in more patients to make their practices financially viable and that this standard is set to further decline as less new doctors come in to replace an aging population of MDs.
Also, insurers pay a lot of people to try to disqualify claims. To put it another way, money that might otherwise be spent on healthcare, is being spent on wages of people whose job it is to make sure that as few claims as possible are honoured, and that as many as possible of those that are honoured, are paid at a reduced rate.
So what happens if we have Universal Healthcare? The big machine put in place to make sure claims are not paid, will no longer be needed. A nice little side benefit of this for those of us who already pay premiums, is that there will be no more nasty surprises in the mail informing them that a procedure they thought they were covered for was partly or wholly disqualified. Another logical effect is that doctors will have more time for doctoring, giving them the choice between increasing their patient intake and reducing their total working hours – in case you are not aware of this, their total hours worked are considerably longer than those to which they are available to you. A less stressed doctor may well be a better doctor. Think about it! Maybe, just maybe, a few more med students can be tempted into this very necessary field?
Hospitals too, will need less clerical staff. Perhaps some can be retrained as medical assistants?
But what will the biggest benefit be? As the machine is drastically reduced, a far larger percentage of healthcare dollars will go to……. Healthcare! And if hospitals are paid for everyone they treat, there will be no hidden costs in their charges. As an analogy, every store you go into factors a percentage of the price of their goods to cover for shoplifting and pilfering. If everyone paid for everything, the price would come down.
While I’m not going to try offering you numbers, I hope I have conveyed to you that the cost of Universal Healthcare will not be close to what its detractors would like you to believe.
Of course, any savings that will be used to help fund Universal Healthcare will be a drop in the bucket in comparison to potential savings if people were taught that in most instances, diet is more effective in preventing and lessening illness than expensive drugs, physician care and costly operations – something that many pressure groups not limited by any means, to drug companies, will fight tooth and nail. But that is a whole different, larger and darker subject, and multiple possible future blog entries.
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First, and most obviously, anyone who is insured currently pays higher premiums than they would if everyone was insured. This is because when an uninsured person gets sick enough, they are given treatment. And the costs are not swallowed by altruistic healthcare concerns. They are passed on in the form of higher costs to those who pay.
In the same vein, the cost of running public hospitals is passed on in the form of taxes. So it is untrue that we currently pay nothing for the uninsured.
From there, the picture becomes somewhat more difficult, as HMOs and other insurers will seek to maintain their profit margins. They will surely launch a propaganda war that will have considerably more to do with maintaining their stranglehold and their profit margins, than actually telling it like it is. So how is it?
My doctor told me that the numbers of young medical students opting for Internal Medicine (your family doctor), have dwindled alarmingly due to drastically reduced earnings potential caused by imposed Healthcare Insurers maximum payment schedules, and the nightmarish and very costly bureaucracy that each must navigate in order to get paid by the insurers. It is fair to deduce from this that the standard of general care has gone down in recent years as doctors face the stress of cramming in more patients to make their practices financially viable and that this standard is set to further decline as less new doctors come in to replace an aging population of MDs.
Also, insurers pay a lot of people to try to disqualify claims. To put it another way, money that might otherwise be spent on healthcare, is being spent on wages of people whose job it is to make sure that as few claims as possible are honoured, and that as many as possible of those that are honoured, are paid at a reduced rate.
So what happens if we have Universal Healthcare? The big machine put in place to make sure claims are not paid, will no longer be needed. A nice little side benefit of this for those of us who already pay premiums, is that there will be no more nasty surprises in the mail informing them that a procedure they thought they were covered for was partly or wholly disqualified. Another logical effect is that doctors will have more time for doctoring, giving them the choice between increasing their patient intake and reducing their total working hours – in case you are not aware of this, their total hours worked are considerably longer than those to which they are available to you. A less stressed doctor may well be a better doctor. Think about it! Maybe, just maybe, a few more med students can be tempted into this very necessary field?
Hospitals too, will need less clerical staff. Perhaps some can be retrained as medical assistants?
But what will the biggest benefit be? As the machine is drastically reduced, a far larger percentage of healthcare dollars will go to……. Healthcare! And if hospitals are paid for everyone they treat, there will be no hidden costs in their charges. As an analogy, every store you go into factors a percentage of the price of their goods to cover for shoplifting and pilfering. If everyone paid for everything, the price would come down.
While I’m not going to try offering you numbers, I hope I have conveyed to you that the cost of Universal Healthcare will not be close to what its detractors would like you to believe.
Of course, any savings that will be used to help fund Universal Healthcare will be a drop in the bucket in comparison to potential savings if people were taught that in most instances, diet is more effective in preventing and lessening illness than expensive drugs, physician care and costly operations – something that many pressure groups not limited by any means, to drug companies, will fight tooth and nail. But that is a whole different, larger and darker subject, and multiple possible future blog entries.
Labels: Conservative lies, Healthcare insurers, HMOs, Uiversal Healtchcare, uninsured
