Let's Cut Medical Costs the Sane Way

It’s a position anathema to true conservatives – but I’ve been in favor of “socialized Medicine” since the 1950s. That’s when my father mentioned to me that more bankruptcies were caused by medical bills than anything else in the country.
About ten years later, I got a good idea of just how some of those bankruptcies come about. I met an old high school friend for coffee. He was managing one of those loan institutions that were quite common forty years ago.
My friend told me, “I’m going to Bankruptcy Court tomorrow.” Why? “A good client of ours, borrows a bit, pays it back on time, is going bankrupt. He has no choice. A couple of months ago his mother died in the hospital.
“As he stood crying over her body, a hospital official shoved a packet of papers under his nose and asked him to sign them as next of kin. ‘It’s just to witness her death,’ the man lied. So our client signed them and went on grieving.
“A week later he discovered he had signed for her complete hospital and doctor costs. He owed over eight thousand bucks. He can’t pay that. It’s more than he earns in a year – and he’s got a wife and kid to support.
“So, we – all his utility companies, the department store where he has a credit card, and I – are showing up in court to tell the judge we do not contest the bankruptcy. We know he’ll pay us, just like he always has. But he’ll be out from under the medical bills.”
Since that time I’ve seen other cases of hardworking people struck by catastrophic illness, driven into bankruptcy. Pay what you cannot hope to pay – or die or lose everything else seems to be the mantra of our present medical system.
I’m not so foolish to blame the hospitals or even the MDs. They have their businesses to run, their staffs to pay and their overhead to cover. (Yes, medicine is a business – have a social chat with any physician or dentist, they’ll make that clear. Your doctor’s office is as much a business operation as your hardware store. Never forget that.)
I’ve had good conservatives, who were really decent folk in their way, tell me seriously, “If you cannot afford to pay for medicine, you should go ahead and die.”
In the world’s richest nation? In the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have universal health coverage – that has nearly 50 million uninsured people. That is truly vicious.
How do they talk us out of universal health coverage?
They ask questions. “Would you want the government handling your medical affairs?” (Oh, ghastly thought!) Why not? It handles my Medicare very nicely. It handles my Social Security. People on Medicaid really get pretty decent care.
So, what’s the problem with a single payer? Send one bill – for everything – to a single source that handles it all – MD, dentist, hospital, drugs, X-rays, blood tests … . Why not?
Have you looked at the backrooms of your physician’s office lately? All those ladies aren’t doing medical tests – they’re figuring out which of potentially one hundred or more insurance plans to bill for this or that patient. Think how much a single payer (Uncle Sam) could save us in billing costs.
Next question: Do you want the government to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship? What relationship? When was the last time your physician came to your house? (In my case, 1953.) He rushes into your cubicle, stares at your file and then asks you what you’re there for. He really has little time to listen – there are seven other cubicles full to be seen.
You’re sick outside of office hours? “Please dial 911 or go to the Emergency Room”. If the office is open but he’s not in this afternoon or his cubicles are full, “please dial 911 or go to the Emergency Room”. What’s worth saving about that relationship?
Next question: Do you want the government telling you which doctor you may go to? Ever have an insurance company or HMO tell you that this or that physician or specialist is not a member? Ha.
Or they warn you: The government would be inefficient. How much more inefficient could the government possibly be than our present medical system where files are lost and one specialist has no idea what the other is doing? Certainly, no more so.
How about a single payer who could force prices down – like single payers (governments) do in Europe? Oh, they warn you, that would mean medical research might stop!
I doubt it. Companies are doing their research in offshore laboratories right now to save a buck. Big Pharma has made sinful profits over the years. Research would go on. A few competitive government grants would make certain of that.
We’ve been fools. Now that company after company is dropping absurdly expensive private medical insurance and more and more folk are uninsured, hopefully we realize that. Next time somebody wants to offer us single payer (government) medical insurance, let’s ignore the silly questions and scare tactics that come over the TV – and let’s vote for medical sanity.
Who do you think pays for those scary commercials? The big insurance companies and the drug companies. They like things the way they are.