In Search of Leadership in Congress: Paying for Health Care
A handful of facts:
- This country has the best health care available in the world, but we pay a premium for it any way you do the math.
Most people don’t have to wait months for critical tests, surgeries, or treatments, but as much as one-third of health care costs go straight to the people who process the payment paperwork: hugely profitable “insurance” companies that cherry-pick who to cover while creating byzantine eligibility rules designed to limit their pay-outs. - Insurance companies neither work to control how much the actual health care costs nor provide plans that compete with other insurance companies. Instead they spend millions every day lobbying Congress, exerting influence in the time-honored drive of every business to increase their own advantage and profits at the expense of competitors. There’s nothing altruistic about the business of insurance, and many elected representatives willingly feed at the lobbyists trough. In fact, according to the World Bank Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz, “what we’ve seen is that the private healthcare insurers do not know how to deliver an efficient way.”
- Many – perhaps even most – of those currently insured are satisfied with their coverage and want it left “as is.” Unfortunately, while that was a central part of what the administration has championed, the Republicans in Congress want to scrap everything and start over. It’s only taken a year to reach this point, what’s a little more time, right?
- More people lose their insurance every day, and while the numbers are constantly disputed nobody doubts that it’s a huge risk to live without health care insurance: over half of all personal bankruptcies are triggered by medical costs, even for those who have insurance. Tens of millions of American citizens have inadequate health care coverage or none at all, and that number is clearly growing.
- There’s no dispute that insurance paid for wholly or in part by employers is, in fact, compensation. If they didn’t pay it, we’d have to. Questions rage around taxing that compensation, but generally the less you pay for your employer-provided coverage the less interested you are in treating it as taxable – nobody wants their take-home pay to decline, so politicians interested in re-election say we should leave it as it is.
- Employers who don’t provide insurance consistently cite the cost, which means that the small businesses always touted as the “job creation engine” are much more likely to hire workers without offering that benefit as we struggle to put more people to work.
Government for the people
A year into President Obama’s first term it’s obvious Congress is in no hurry to pass reforms, so citizens live with growing risks and financial burdens. “We the People” are supposed to be in control of our government, but our needs are being trampled by a combination of one party largely posturing for political points and digging in their heels, while lobbyists use special interest money to shave off just enough votes from the other party to keep progress at an effective standstill.
Leadership isn’t leaving the system as it’s always been. That kind of “leadership” would mean we were still colonies of European countries, if not living in caves. Inaction is rarely a viable approach to confronting a crisis, and the flagrant profiteering of health care insurance in America is a crisis. We have some of the best doctors, nurses, and medical training facilities in the world, but a few greedy corporations are exploiting the system at the expense of our standard of living today.
Is Congress hoping to leave this vast, profitable industry to self-regulate, the way they did with Wall Street? Are they really expecting advice from people hoping to make a profit will build a system that protects you and me?
The sooner we fix how we pay for our health care the better off we’ll all be. The founding fathers had the courage to face unpleasant truths and act despite the very real risk to their lives by opposing the King of England and his military legions. Are the people in Congress today opposing health care insurance changes scared to face down one money-making industry, or simply greedy?
