Managing Healthcare

Sent to Letters to the Editor of The Hill
Our government at all levels, including many state mandates, already manages heathcare for active duty, the VA, in Medicare, Medicaid, Government employees insurance (including Congress, SCHIP (children) and for 100 years through the IHS [Indian Health Services]. Depending on who gets elected, quality and accessibility waxes and wanes because … politicians tend to make decisions based on, well, politics:

“many believe IHS sits low on the government's priority list. As a result, the IHS has remained terribly underfunded. For example, IHS spends approximately $2,100 per patient each year. Medicare …pays about $8,000, and Medicaid …pays about $4,500 per patient each year. ..these figures, says the Leader, ..come from the government's own statistics”

The Pine Ridge infant morality remains about double the surrounding area. If Congress thinks costs can be cut by encouraging life style changes, shouldn’t they prove it on the Pine Ridge first? Of course, we are assured, all new plans from DC are being designed to be ‘FAIR’ – no favoritism.

When I graduated from Omaha Benson High in 1960, there were about 400 in our class. By 1964, new wings were being added. The boomer generation’s size always seems to amaze the public facility planners and it’s about to hit and, I believe, collapse Medicare. Who are we kidding with planned ‘savings from Medicare’? And those ‘meanie’ insurance executives are actually looking forward to the plum of ‘required coverage’. The pharma-controlled FDA makes sure drug profits stay high too.

The government consumes wealth; private industry creates wealth. This is why socialism leads to Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’. In medicine, capitalism created cutting edge care and innovation and still does. If reform happens, let’s increase, not decrease, capitalism and reduce the unfair favoritisms of politics. Lets not fall victim to the tyranny of the majority and have our individual options removed.

Technology, in a marketplace, brings down prices and increases quality as in Lasik eye surgery which is not covered by insurance. The more we return to ‘fee for service’ in medicine, the more prices fall and the more efficient the system becomes.

We don’t have too little government in medicine. We have too much.

PS. Daschle was Senator of S.D. for many years. He is our publicly administered medical ‘Expert’?