Little Progress on Health Care

I do not have a great sense of joy or relief with the passage of the House health care bill. While it may help a few people along the edges (those with pre-existing conditions, for example), it doesn't get to the heart of the problem with our health care system, with its for-profit nature and its swelling costs.

One of the more honest and courageous congressmen is Dennis Kucinich from Ohio. He voted against the recent bill and gave the following reason from his website:

“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only
within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which
makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance
companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which
the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the
for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When
health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles
they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.
They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive
bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors
to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting
stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970,
the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of
administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of
every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing
care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of
bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when
you get sick.

“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance,
H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization
of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21
million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that
causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new
annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably
will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance
companies — a bailout under a blue cross.

I have not been following the debate very closely in the last few months, but I am persuaded that unless we get the overall costs under control, this whole health care system will turn out to be a huge bubble that is not sustainable and that will eventually burst, causing huge dislocations and suffering to many millions of people. That is not going to happen with this bill.