The Health Care Crisis
By Don Morrison
Originally appeared in the Prairie Independent, March 2008
Maybe you and your family are dealing with this, too.
Health care costs are skyrocketing past those incoming dollars from wages, salaries or business or farm net income. It’s a recipe of working harder and losing ground; often paying more in and getting less out.
More people are asking: Is this as good as it gets?
For a long time now, health insurance companies, doctors, hospital administrators, large and small businesses, and consumers have each been dealing with this situation from their own interests. For many of us without clout, we deal with it as best we can, wondering why our access to the system has to be so incredibly complicated and why we have to keep losing ground.
To hear those in power today, this squeeze is our fault. They say “get a job,” “go to school,” “start a business,” “buy your own policy,” or “what’s wrong with you?” What planet are they on? Families that do all that and more still watch as the health care problem gets worse.
We are working hard, being good, and trying to provide for our loved ones. Blaming us for the health care problem seems a bit misplaced, don’t you think?
Let’s look behind that “Wizard of Oz” health insurance curtain and see what else is happening.
Today, sitting in the driver’s seat of health care, are private insurance companies. These companies have devised all sorts of neat bureaucratic tools to extract money from us: premiums, deductibles, co-payments, co-insurance, non-covered charges, out-of-network charges, with continuous increases in all. They also impose coverage limits and force us into PPOs, EPOs, and other outer-space sounding names. Their spokespeople can be so pleasant as they explain that this is for our own good.
Better Health Through Chance
For people who were lucky in the lottery of employer-provided insurance, the fine print on insurance tickets is fading. Fewer employers are providing health insurance to their employees, and those who do are passing along cost increases in higher out-of-pocket charges. Workers either do not get raises so health insurance premiums can be paid or they get raises and the entire raise, and then some, goes to pay for the family’s higher health care costs.
Just as important is that we have changed how we make health care decisions. Often the first question for patients and health care providers is not: how can I be healthy? Instead, the question is: what will insurance cover?
The fact is, private insurance companies make money not when they pay claims, but when they don’t. Companies have intruded deep into provider-patient decision-making. And it’s well documented how insurance companies pay millions to research ways to deny claims.
Rising Numbers
This is life for Americans who have it good because they have health insurance in some form or another. Every year, the number of Americans without health insurance goes up another 1.5 million, so now there are 47 million uninsured Americans.
At some point in 2006-2007 about 90 million Americans were uninsured – that’s one out of three people under the age of 65. Each year, 18,000 Americans die because of lack of insurance.
Solving Problems With Democracy
Americans pay more for health care than any other country. But, our health outcomes are not as good. There is obviously plenty of money in the system, but way too much of it does not go to health care. Of course, those running it are doing well (see chart on CEO compensation).
Our health care problems are, of course, solvable. In a democracy, it does not have to be this way. Missing from the discussion on American health care are our experiences and what we think. Those who do the bidding of insurance and drug companies have had their way, running the show for decades. It is time to make sure that ordinary, everyday people are heard.
Now is the time for us to search for a better way. After all, health care is like education, roads, and fire protection; something our community can ensure. Positive change happens when ordinary folks know things have gotten out of balance or no longer make sense. That’s when we realize we really are in this together. To paraphrase a famous quote, “The future belongs to those who show up.”
The Prairie Independent would like to hear from you. What are your experiences – positive and problematic – with health care in our community? As we make our voices heard to change the system, what is important to you and your family?
Send your ideas to: info@ndpublicgood.org
