digitalBush

Unless you've been under a rock, you should know that Massachusetts elected a Republican senator to replace the late Ted Kennedy. Hopefully you also realize that the state has been democratic since the 80's. This election has disrupted the democratic majority in the senate and has essentially killed the healthcare reform bill in it's current state. The people have spoken; very few people in this country are comfortable with the current healthcare reform bill. The bill is huge; it's doubtful that any of the people voting on the bill have actually read it; and no one is sure if the country can even afford it.

courtesy of brykmantra

So, now what?
I'm personally not a fan of universal healthcare. With that said, I still feel like the healthcare system needs some reform. Actually, given that I work in the healthcare industry, I KNOW how messed up our healthcare system is. Now it's back to the drawing board.  It's definitely not time to give up on fixing healthcare.

Quit Whining!
Lawmakers, you should be thankful that this out-of-band election took place.  Now you can see just how far you've strayed from the path of real America.  We elected you to represent us, so now you had better start.  The Massachusetts election is your warning: Stop working for the special interest groups and start working for us or we'll find someone else who will.

Let's Start Small
In order to regain support for healthcare reform, the country as a whole needs to understand what's actually being done. My challenge to you is to go back and not try to reform healthcare in one failed swoop.  Write smaller bills which focus on a particular area.  Keep it small and simple so that those of us who want to know what the bill represents can actually sit down and read it in an hour or two.  My water cooler conversations should be able to talk about the "Healthcare Tort Reform" or the "Children's Healthcare Coverage" bills.  You see the difference there?  I can talk about the bill in a simple statement and know the general idea of what we're trying to do.  "Healthcare Reform" is such a broad term that you could be doing anything in that bill; it's just too hard to understand what you're doing.

What are you waiting for?  Go back to the beginning and figure out what needs fixing and fix it already.  Lawmakers, this is your job.  To everyone else, please make sure that you vote for people who you think will make a difference and will more closely represent your values.  It's time to stop voting based on party lines and start looking at the people and what they stand for.

I've held off on this topic for a while now.  I had originally written a smug article titled "Fixing Healthcare in the US" which I may or may not post at some point in time in the future.  Before we even talk about "fixing" healthcare, we first need to figure out what is "wrong" with healthcare.  Listen up congressmen, you need to read that last sentence again.  You can't fix something until you know what the problem is.

What are the problems, you ask?  Well, as I understand it, we have two issues at play:

1. Healthcare is too expensive.
2. Health insurance is too expensive.

As a result of the above two problems, not enough people can afford to take care of themselves and their families healthcare needs. But, this only addresses the consumers vantage point of the issue.  There are two other parties involved here and their needs must be met as well.  We have healthcare providers and we have health insurance companies all with skin in this game.  These other parties have their own problems which are feeding the above two issues.

Healthcare providers are the doctors you visit and the hospitals in which you stay.  The people who choose this profession spend 8 years in school and then another 3 to 8 years of internship and residency. When they are done with this, they have to work long hours and are expected to make no mistakes.  In case they do make a mistake, they need to carry huge amounts of insurance to cover themselves should a lawsuit find their name listed as the defendant.  Bottom line, it costs a lot to become a physician and it costs a lot to stay a physician.

Insurance companies are the entities that we have become too dependent on in the US to take care of us when we break.  We pay exorbitant monthly fees so that we can have $10 drug co-pays and $20 doctor visits when we get sick. When things really go wrong, they step in and cover the brunt of the expenses that come from the physicians and hospitals I mentioned above.  This kind of coverage is expensive because it's expensive for the insurance company to pay out $60 every time your little brat gets a snotty nose.  It's really expensive for them when your fat ass develops diabetes and coronary artery disease as a result of your poor lifestyle decisions.

So, let's recap for a minute.  Being a health care provider is expensive.  In order to pay off their insane student loans that they accumulated over 8 years of school and to cover their E&O insurance for lawsuits, they charge quite a bit for their services.  That leads to issue #1 above.  Since we do not use health insurance for only catastrophic coverage (like we do for say, home and auto insurance) then health insurance has to be high to cover their increasing payouts.  Enter issue #2 from above. Providers and insurance companies are businesses after all, and businesses have to make money in order to keep providing products and services.

Because of the high price tags, a high number of people can't afford to get health insurance.  This has been the focus of national debate.  There are some flaws in our system, but I'm not so sure our lawmakers have actually sat down and identified the real problems at hand.  Before we start up an expensive national healthcare experiment, we need to think this through. I hope to feel my way through this issue with a series of blog posts over the next few weeks.