Wrong Diagnosis = Wrong (ineffective) Treatment

In medical practice, successful treatment of a patient’s illness requires establishing a proper diagnosis. Without intelligent and logical evaluation of a sickness, ill-conceived and hastily implemented “therapy” would only exacerbate the illness and would be worse than no treatment. It would be utter folly to declare a patient critically ill and hurriedly implement treatment because “something must be done” without first properly understanding the cause of the illness. Yet, this is the very attitude and approach underlying the current proposals in Congress for health-care reform.

Health-care costs currently account for 18% of our GDP and that percentage is projected to nearly double in the next 20 years. Escalating health-care costs place ever increasing financial burdens on families and businesses, threatening the long-term viability of our economy, the long-term solvency of our state and Federal governments, and, in the end, our opportunity and our children’s opportunity to live the American Dream. As needed for treating medical illness, successful treatment of this national health-care “illness, first requires thoughtful analysis to determine and identify the underlying causes of this “illness”.

While multiple factors contribute to ever increasing health-care costs, our health-care insurance system, which effectively disconnects the consumer of health-care services from the immediate cost of that care, is the essential driver of those costs. Certainly, the insurance premium cost is felt directly by the consumer who may pay for part or the entire premium, and/or felt indirectly through reduced wage dollars that are instead paid as health-care insurance employee benefit. However, once that premium is paid, there is little incentive not to use health-care services as much as one desires. Health-care insurance in our country is unlike any other type of insurance. Imagine the cost of auto insurance, if having paid the insurance premium one could have as much automobile as they desired or the cost of home owner’s insurance, if having paid the premium, one could have as much home as they desired. Once inside the health-care insurance system, the demand for services becomes almost unlimited. As a result, the cost to get into this system, i.e. the insurance premium, continually increases. In turn, the premium becomes unaffordable for more and more Americans or places increasing financial stress on families and businesses that continue to purchase health-care insurance.

The same mechanism drives the continually increasing Medicare and Medicaid expenses and propels those programs further into insolvency. As with the private health-care insurance, once inside the government (taxpayer) health-care programs, there is little incentive or restraining forces to limit demand for care. Not recognizing or not addressing this essential underlying cause of the health-care expense “illness”, the current health-care “reform” proposals effectively would place more people into the same unsustainable insurance system, and would only make the “illness” worse.

To achieve meaningful health-care cost control, any reform must include shifting the primary payment responsibility of routine medical care expenses and a higher percentage of initial extraordinary health-care expenses to the consumer of those services. Third party health-care payers would then be responsible for extraordinary medical expense above this higher consumer payment threshold. Much like high deductable auto or property insurance, health-care premiums for such policies would be significantly lower than for low deductible policies. The individual consumer could then apply the premium savings to payment of routine health-care and/or to payment of their portion of extraordinary medical expenses. Such a system would decrease demand for health-care services and therefore expenditures for health-care services. Further, the system would incentivize the individual consumer to demand more accountability and transparency with regard to quality and cost of those services from the providers of health-care services e.g. physicians and hospitals. This accountability and transparency would also indirectly promote lower implant and medication costs.

Such reform in fact has been proposed in Congress but has not received any serious discussion or even consideration by the Democrat majority. The critical component of these proposals is expansion of Health Savings Account insurance. These policies include high deductibles, low premiums, and individual owned and controlled tax-favored health-care savings accounts. HSAs are not the entire solution to our health-care problems but would logically and effectively address a key cause of our health-care “illness”.

Two years ago facing yet another significant annual increase of our health-care premiums, Orthopaedic and Spine Specialists discarded traditional health-care insurance and implemented an HSA policy. OSS pays a significant portion of the premium and annually funds the health savings accounts with roughly 70% of the annual (high) deductable amount for our employees. Although the change did involve some effort to educate ourselves and our employees about the mechanics of the program, last year was the first that our premium did not increase and it appears the premium will remain stable again this year.

Indisputably, we need health-care reform but successful reform requires thoughtful and rational policy formulation, utilizing traditional American economic free market values; not hastily crafted, misconceived and intrusive government policies.

There is no problem so bad that it can’t be made worse by doing the wrong thing.

We must all fight to prevent the wrong kind of health-care reform and the dangerous expansion of government control and debt. Every individual can make a difference. Write your congressman and senators (contact info found at http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm); and join and contribute your time, energy, and money as you are able to grass root organizations such as the American’s for Prosperity http://americansforprosperity.org/national-site, American Liberty Alliance http://americanlibertyalliance.com/, and/or other free market based grass roots organizations.