Raw Video: Specter Faces Angry Town Hall - washingtonpost.com
Health Care reform is not an option!Can anyone look at these orchestrated disruptions of Town Hall meetings and not wonder? Are special interests are promoting and paying for them? The last time a serious Health Care Reform came along, highly sophisticated TV skits defeated it. Today the gloves are off; a raw, mean spirited fear campaign is afoot. The demonstrations and the fear campaign fall on fertile ground. The talk show personalities, one especially have preached hate and untruth to the point of sedition*
The sad fact remains, the US does not have the best health care by any measure unless you are fortunate to have the top tear of insurance and choose your specialty clinic or university hospital wisely. --- We are in fact 16th, right after Ireland.
Glitzy claims to the contrary, the US did not invent health care or scientific medicine. However, we did carry the profession to incredible heights of humanitarian, scientific and technological achievement in the last Century. The advent of insurance in place of a public or charitable option marked the beginning of the end of humanity and dedication to science. What ensued was a vicious circle of commercialization, and profiteering by the administration of a non-market economy; this was an open feeding trough for anyone with a gimmick and an exploitative business plan. For the now more creative insurance company, this became a bonanza, the more the merrier! All increased charges resulted directly in increased insurance premiums and thus revenue for the insurance company.
In truth, the government attempted to regulate Medicare, Medicaid and the emergence room behavior of the private sector. The government administrators were political mot medical and predictably did not get it right. Most of the new regulation made matters worse, or worse still played into the hands of the insurance industry.
Modest discounted reimbursement would have been OK in a static competitive market, but static or competitive was anything but the case; furthermore, the discounts were deep. What do you do when the discount falls below your break even? --- Well, you either quit or raise prices, precisely to a point where discounted reimbursement still equals enough profit to put your kids through college. -- Alas, the insurance premium goes up 25%, and the insurance CEO buys a new mansion.
Then, who should the demonstrators be yelling at? I think not the messenger and the legislators brave enough to counter the lobbyists, and the incredible market muscle of: big pharmacy, big insurance, big HMOs and the American Hospital Association -- all special interests with enormous vested interest in seeing that things remain just as they are; they will to go to any length to secure that outcome.
Health Care is not so different from: the banking crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the energy crisis and yes the environmental crisis of rising CO2. Each of these segments of the economy has: deregulated, merged, privatized, or to such an extent gotten around anti trust laws and anti monopoly laws as to exploit the public to the breaking point. --- and we broke. We have a multifaceted full-scale depression.
Remarkably, all of these broken segments of our economy fall into what one might call the public infrastructure. One might view our free enterprise system, our private business, our private economy, as the most efficient the world has ever seen. Leaders cannot be faulted for thinking that same lessie-faire, Adam Smith economy could efficiently deliver public services. Substantial favors derived from accommodating lobbyists’ promotion of deregulation and privatization. On the contrary, however, the private infrastructure is not a free market. Instead of efficiency, privatization produced only exploitation.
In my opinion, Health Care can only be fixed by: side stepping private insurance and creating a public delivery system. States, regions or academic centers for the sake of science and regional differences should form the structure for a low-key highly academic system. Additionally, one of the most overlooked considerations is the current explosion of molecular and genetic knowledge translationally leading to unimagined changes in our understanding of disease and ultimately health care. The new knowledge promises to change most everything. To accommodate the certain changes an academic rather than a regulatory approach would seem most practical.
Let's hope that some comprehension of clinical medicine, public health and science finds its way into the health care debate.
* article 94 a-2 UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice)
Health Care reform is not an option!Can anyone look at these orchestrated disruptions of Town Hall meetings and not wonder? Are special interests are promoting and paying for them? The last time a serious Health Care Reform came along, highly sophisticated TV skits defeated it. Today the gloves are off; a raw, mean spirited fear campaign is afoot. The demonstrations and the fear campaign fall on fertile ground. The talk show personalities, one especially have preached hate and untruth to the point of sedition*
The sad fact remains, the US does not have the best health care by any measure unless you are fortunate to have the top tear of insurance and choose your specialty clinic or university hospital wisely. --- We are in fact 16th, right after Ireland.
Glitzy claims to the contrary, the US did not invent health care or scientific medicine. However, we did carry the profession to incredible heights of humanitarian, scientific and technological achievement in the last Century. The advent of insurance in place of a public or charitable option marked the beginning of the end of humanity and dedication to science. What ensued was a vicious circle of commercialization, and profiteering by the administration of a non-market economy; this was an open feeding trough for anyone with a gimmick and an exploitative business plan. For the now more creative insurance company, this became a bonanza, the more the merrier! All increased charges resulted directly in increased insurance premiums and thus revenue for the insurance company.
In truth, the government attempted to regulate Medicare, Medicaid and the emergence room behavior of the private sector. The government administrators were political mot medical and predictably did not get it right. Most of the new regulation made matters worse, or worse still played into the hands of the insurance industry.
Modest discounted reimbursement would have been OK in a static competitive market, but static or competitive was anything but the case; furthermore, the discounts were deep. What do you do when the discount falls below your break even? --- Well, you either quit or raise prices, precisely to a point where discounted reimbursement still equals enough profit to put your kids through college. -- Alas, the insurance premium goes up 25%, and the insurance CEO buys a new mansion.
Then, who should the demonstrators be yelling at? I think not the messenger and the legislators brave enough to counter the lobbyists, and the incredible market muscle of: big pharmacy, big insurance, big HMOs and the American Hospital Association -- all special interests with enormous vested interest in seeing that things remain just as they are; they will to go to any length to secure that outcome.
Health Care is not so different from: the banking crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the energy crisis and yes the environmental crisis of rising CO2. Each of these segments of the economy has: deregulated, merged, privatized, or to such an extent gotten around anti trust laws and anti monopoly laws as to exploit the public to the breaking point. --- and we broke. We have a multifaceted full-scale depression.
Remarkably, all of these broken segments of our economy fall into what one might call the public infrastructure. One might view our free enterprise system, our private business, our private economy, as the most efficient the world has ever seen. Leaders cannot be faulted for thinking that same lessie-faire, Adam Smith economy could efficiently deliver public services. Substantial favors derived from accommodating lobbyists’ promotion of deregulation and privatization. On the contrary, however, the private infrastructure is not a free market. Instead of efficiency, privatization produced only exploitation.
In my opinion, Health Care can only be fixed by: side stepping private insurance and creating a public delivery system. States, regions or academic centers for the sake of science and regional differences should form the structure for a low-key highly academic system. Additionally, one of the most overlooked considerations is the current explosion of molecular and genetic knowledge translationally leading to unimagined changes in our understanding of disease and ultimately health care. The new knowledge promises to change most everything. To accommodate the certain changes an academic rather than a regulatory approach would seem most practical.
Let's hope that some comprehension of clinical medicine, public health and science finds its way into the health care debate.
* article 94 a-2 UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice)
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