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Health Care Reform, the Medical Community and You

There is a tremendous effort by the President and the Democratic Party to swiftly replace our current system of health care insurance with a government sponsored insurance program designed to bring health insurance coverage to all Americans. Of course, this sounds like a wonderful idea, however, after understanding the details outlined in the proposed legislation, many may want to reconsider their position.

There are a few facts you just can’t get around. When more than 47 million uninsured Americans are added to a system that currently accommodates 260 million Americans, something is going to have to give. Assuming the same patient load, approximately 10,000 more physicians will need to be available or care for the 47 million. Other Americans will need to be delayed or eliminated. This is not unusual in places like England, France and Canada where National Healthcare has been in place for quite some time. Additionally, facilities, resources and support staff will be effected proportionally. The promoters of this legislation can promise all day long that this won’t happen, but unless they have the same capabilities that Christ had when he fed 500 followers with two loaves of bread and seven fish around 2000 years ago, the numbers say it just can’t work without serious health care rationing.

The next issue that stands out is the promise of reforming health care thereby significantly reducing costs. If we look at Medicare and Medicaid as examples and understand the tremendous deficit that is growing due to poor management and excessive fraud, how could we even imagine we could increase the size and responsibility of a program and then believe it would be operated efficiently enough to reduce costs. These are wonderful dreams, but they are just dreams. TARP is operating with little control or knowledge of recipients use of funds, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been unable to disperse funds or lower unemployment as projected and the Cash for Clunkers program was so grossly miscalculated that it ran out of funds in the first week and hasn’t been able to issue reimbursement payments to auto dealers effectively. We were told these programs would work great and they had to be in place immediately.

But let’s assume for one moment we can some how accommodate the extra 47 million insured and that through some miracle we are able to control costs without reducing the quality or quantity of care. How do we get past the fact that the majority of Americans do not want or support the health care reform legislation being proposed? It appears our elected representatives don’t really care what we want.

Yes, they were elected to represent us, but they represent themselves and their party’s position first. Once they have accommodated them, then they may consider understanding our preferences. Of course, the exception to this position is at election time when every promise is to represent the people that elect them.

Posted in General Health