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by Ron Getty
| Wed, 23 Jan 2008 |
Health Care Tough Love
In 1941, a woman was given a one-page, hand-written hospital bill for $73.75 after an 11-day stay following the caesarian birth of her son. Based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index, the same hospital bill today should be $1,023. However, the actual hospital bill would be closer to $13,300. This means that since 1941 medical costs have risen at twice the rate of the CPI.
Is it possible to make health care as affordable as it was back in 1941?
First, two truths need to be understood about basic economics. Prices rise when demand exceeds supply. Prices fall when supply exceeds demand.
Achieving the increased supply of health care needed with a concurrent reduction in the bureaucracy in claims processing can reduce the cost of health care. However, let's acknowledge some relevant factors affecting health care costs and provide some health care tough love.
With aging Baby Boomers hitting retirement, demands on the health care system will increase and health care prices will rise. The uninsured create another dynamic that affects health care prices.
The witches' brew of HMOs, Medicare, Medicaid, and private and group medical insurance induces increases on the costs and supply of health care through the reimbursement process of what is and isn't covered. The massive paperwork and administration needed to process claims and payments by government agencies, insurers, and health care providers causes further ripples in the cost of medical care. Legislation dictating to medical insurers and providers what is to be covered also adds to health care costs.
The Food and Drug Administration creates additional disruption. The FDA's red-tape ridden bureaucratic process for approving new medications and medical equipment dramatically increases health care costs for medicine and medical equipment.
Overall, the biggest and gravest major factor that must be addressed is in the health care personnel needed to provide medical services.
Thousands of retiring Baby Boomer personnel will reduce accessibility to trained and experienced medical staff, and cause long lines and lessened competition. To offset the loss of retirees, more people must enroll in training programs for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, and medical lab personnel. This means more training facilities for medical personnel and qualified medical teachers.
Public schools will have to stop graduating functional illiterates who need remedial math and English at the college level if we hope to have the number of necessary people capable of entering those medical training programs.
The American Medical Association and state licensing requirements further exacerbates the cost of medical care. The extensive mandatory training standards place barriers – some medically necessitated – in the way of additional health care personnel entering the field and competing for patients.
We need a physician-light program without the 12-year doctoral training program. A physician could specialize in specific types of medicine, like podiatrists are doing, with reduced training required. We also need an accelerated licensing program for qualified foreign-trained health care professionals, and we need to allow RNs to run bumps, bruises, scrapes, and basic shots medical clinics where MDs aren't needed.
More community hospitals, medical clinics, and medical training facilities must be opened to increase consumer options for health care, which will reduce costs through competition. As a result, we will need to rethink zoning and building permit processes to allow more such facilities.
Yes, these things can happen. However, to make an omelet, eggs are going to get broken. The biggest eggs to break will be politicians and their misguided efforts to omnisciently determine how health care must be provided for everyone at taxpayers' expense.
Radical measures are called for to increase the supply of health care and reduce prices through competition. This means doing the following:
- Eliminate licensing standards for hospitals, pharmacies, doctors, nurses, medical personnel, medical colleges and medical clinics;
- Eliminate the FDA;
- Deregulate the medical insurance industry;
- Repeal the HMO Act of 1970;
- Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid and all other involuntarily, taxpayer-funded, government programs providing medical benefits at the federal or the state level; and
- Eliminate legislatively mandated employer health insurance.
The tough love solution to the health care crisis is getting politicians and the government out of the health care business. Let free enterprise medical providers address the market demands for health care at a price anyone can afford. Affordable health care can happen when there are no politicians or government agencies infecting the medical marketplace.
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